Mirror Mirror
by Sythe
Summary: One day, Harry J Potter made a wish in front of the mirror of Erised. One day, Bruce Banner woke up naked in a green-eyed man's aparment. One day, Harry introduced himself with his father's name to a strange man he found naked, green, and angry on the street. One day, SHIELD discovered human magic... and tried to make weapons from it. And the world is never the same.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: The Avengers universe and all its characters belong to Marvel. Likewise with Harry Potter.

**Chapter 1:** In Which Bruce Banner Woke up Naked and with Strange Company

"_It took seven years of bitter warfare for the Alliance to end World War 2. The Americans ended the Japanese regime with two atomic bombs in nine days. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagashaki, the few that still live, call us butchers, death bringers. The unveiling of atomic bomb technology halted the world and plunged us into a Cold War that lasted for forty-five years, ending with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Even to this day, the mere rumor that particular terrorist states hold even the scrapped blueprints of atomic technology is enough to send the world into panic. And it all started with those first two bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man. What we just discovered today, my fellow Avengers, might very well turn the Boy and the Man into schoolyard bullies."_

Nick Fury, 2012

* * *

This was how it started.

Bruce woke up to the view of expensive wood ceiling, sore, wet, and aching. It was a well-made ceiling; deeply brown African Mahogany with authentic all-natural knots and patterns. Waterproof, very handsome, and probably cost an arm and a leg in this high-tech city. He had half a mind to realize he was feeling the aftermath of a Hulk episode, and the other half idly wondering 'Who in Manhattan has the money and the taste for wood ceiling in their apartment?'

The last time Bruce could remember still being Bruce and not… well… the manifestation of his angry subconscious he had taken to calling the Other Guy, he was still in the Helicarrier floating in the skies of Manhattan, overlooking the statue of Lady Liberty.

At some point after his Hulk Out, there must have been some emergency parachuting from the Helicarrier without any parachute, because Bruce was sure there was no such apartment (with expensive African Mahogany ceiling that smelled like honest-to-God Mahogany and not that artificial stuff they grew in five months from sapling to the woodcutter in a dingy factory somewhere in a Third-world country of choice) anywhere in that gadget lover's wet dream Nick Fury called the Helicarrier. That… and the window above him was showing a decidedly ground level view of a rundown brick wall and some glimpse of a neighborhood park. He could even hear the squabbling sounds of children playing outside.

He sat up. The wet towel on his forehead fell to his lap. The blanket slid down to Bruce's navel. Bruce's very naked navel.

"You're awake?" Said a voice in clear British accent.

"Uh…" Bruce stammered, blushing as he gripped and gathered the blanket to hide his naked form, cursing the Hulk's inability to play nice with clothing and the lack of ultra-stretchable textile in male underwear market. He looked up. His gaze crashed head first into a pair of green eyes, which he remembered reading somewhere existed in only about two percent of the world total population. The owner of said eyes was looking down at him, a young twenty-something man, black hair, lean build, whose hand was holding the handle of a smoking pan. The smell of freshly-fried omelettes wafted into Bruce's nose. Green-eyes (a bit corny but Bruce didn't know what else to call him except for maybe Omelette Fryer which sounded like the name of an electronic appliance, or Rich African Mahogany Ceiling which didn't really stick because it was way too long and what did African Mahogany ceiling have to do with a man anyway?) was also wearing a funny-looking pink Kiss-the-cook apron.

"You're made of some tough stuff, aren't you? Didn't think you'd be up so soon. You were pretty out back then. Fever, sweating, I was thinking of calling the local hospital cause I didn't know if I could handle you here. I live alone you see, except for Mrs. Twiddletum next door who sometimes visits, but… ah, it doesn't really matter. You're right on time for breakfast. Want some mister…" Green-eyes (again, because Bruce felt that Pink Apron was more appropriate in the mind of an eight year old girl and not in a thirty-something physicist with anger management issue) left the sentence hanging with the obvious question.

"Uh… uh… Bruce…" Bruce's eyes were glued to the pink Kiss-the-cook apron. It really was hideous. The kind of hideous that made him wonder if the dyer was color-blind. "…Pink…" His mouth voiced the train of his thought unbiddenly. "… I mean. Banner. Bruce. Bruce Banner. No Pink. And yes, I'd like breakfast. If you don't mind."

"Laundry accident. My neighbor wears a lot of red. It was white before." Green-eyes explained with a sheepish smile Bruce was sure would make some hundred women go weak in the knee with its bashful boyishness, and left to put the pan back on the kitchen stove. There were a few minutes in which Bruce spent sitting naked and awkward on the coach which he had woken up on. Then Green-eyes was back, bearing a bundle of clothes on his arms.

"Call me James." He said as he handed the clothes to Bruce, who put them on graciously. Within the next two minutes, Bruce was standing in a shirt and trousers a size too tight for him… in a room with a man he didn't know, after a Hulk episode he couldn't remember much of.

"Hmmm… that will have to do. You're taller than me and I haven't kept my cousin's castoffs for years." Call-me-James James commented, before pulling Bruce to the room next door and sitting him down in a chair in front of a dining table. A full English breakfast was laid out in front of Bruce.

"Dig in." James commanded before taking up a spoon and fork and helped himself to a plate of steaming omelettes and bacons. Bruce sat there in the chair, slightly bewildered. He had half a mind to ask James if naked strange men often wake up in his apartment and did James make them breakfast every single time? But aside from the few instances where he was Hulkified, Bruce was a generally nice and polite fellow, verging slightly on meek because of his alter ego, and asking that kind of questions seemed offensive, even to the point of being homophobic maybe, so instead of voicing his question, Bruce picked up his own fork and tried to ignore the creeping sense of surrealism.

"So… what happened?" It was James who asked midway into their breakfast.

"Uh… what?" Bruce countered eloquently. For all intents and purposes, it should have been Bruce who asked that question. After all, Bruce wasn't the one who was calmly having breakfast with a strange man who was passed out and naked and also not the embarrassing aftermath of a one night stand here. A strange man who could be anyone from a perfectly respectable post office officer who just happened to have, maybe, lost a fight with a particularly vicious dog to a homicidal person who liked to go about his business sans clothes.

But on the other hand, out of the two persons currently in the room, Bruce was the one who had a very green, very big anger management issue, the mentioning of which never failed to put him in a guilty and shameful mood. Still, he didn't see how he could possibly explain himself adequately to this man, who was kind - and weird - enough to take him in after an episode of Hulk-all-night. He didn't want to lie, and he wasn't in the mood to deal with a screaming-his-lungs-off James. Confronted with these problems, Bruce opted to play with his food, feigning temporary deafness.

Awkward silence ensued.

James calmly cut up his bacons while staring at Bruce.

"Okay." Said James, chewing thoughtfully, apparently already decided that Bruce didn't want to talk and James was fine with it. "You have a place to go to? Have some changes on you?" The look in James's eyes was one reserved by a Good Samaritan for a homeless person.

"I'm not a hobo." Bruce blurted out.

"I'm not saying you are."

"I'm a physicist."

"Yes, right, you are." Said James indulgingly. 'A physicist who was naked and unconscious in a stranger's apartment.' hang unvoiced in the air.

Awkward silence two-point-zero ensued, during which Bruce wondered just where the heck S.H.I.E.L.D and its grabby agent hands were, then prayed fervently for divine intervention. Divine intervention, unfortunately, had chosen not to come so Bruce spent the next ten minutes or so pushing his egg scramble in circles.

"I must have… drunk quite a bit last night." He ventured finally, stealing looks about the apartment. So far, he could see no collateral damage and since no question of the 'Green' kind was forthcoming from James, so perhaps James hadn't caught him in full Hulk mode. Dared he hope? Yes, he dared. He hadn't remembered much aside from the chaos, very likely created by Loki and his S.H.I.E.L.D agents. There was an argument about the Tesseract and its potential for producing weapons the like of which the world had never seen, then the attack, then the anger boiling under a thin film of perpetual stress.

In the chaos, he must have gone Hulk and fallen off the Helicarrier because there was no other scenario in which S.H.I.E.L.D let him flounce around New York unsupervised like this… not after going Green, no. So what after?

Bruce was used to waking up naked amidst rubbles and destruction of his own making. This was the first time he'd actually woken up on a bed after going Hulk… correction, a coach, but the same thing applied, and he was at a lost at what to do… or think for that matter? How could he explain the lack of broken buildings and smashed up streets?

"Yeah, you must have. I've never seen someone going starker right in front of my door quite like that before. Do you know how many ladies live in this apartment block?"

Bruce winced.

"Yeah, I thought so." James helped himself to a long gulp of coffee, then opened this morning New York Daily. A screaming title head '_Pandemonium in the Heart of Manhattan, Debris from the Skies_' greeted Bruce. A little bit below that front page header was a more conspicuous '_Stuttgart Riots – Megalomaniac Man in Leathers - Hooligan or Terrorist?_'

Bruce swallowed a mouthful of egg, then stabbed the bacons. He was hoping that there was no 'Naked green man on rampage' inside. Most likely not. News like '_Naked Green Man_' usually weren't relegated to page two, but in this case, '_Naked Green Man_' had probably had to compete with '_Manhattan Pandemonium_' and '_Megalomaniac Man in Leathers_' (Bruce deduced '_Megalomaniac Man In Leathers'_ might have won in The National Enquirer, but The New York Daily was a more straight-laced publication so '_Manhattan Pandemonium_' had had more chances). Perhaps…, Bruce prayed fervently inside his head, … perhaps someone had knocked him out. He could think of a few members of the Avengers and even some of SHIELD with the appropriate equipments who were capable of such feats. Or perhaps it was the fall from the Helicarrier itself. God knew it was high enough up there. And here he was, alone and in ill-fitting clothes in James's apartment.

Another ten minutes passed before James decided that he was finished with reading. He took a look at his wristwatch, then at Bruce.

"So… I have work in about twenty min…"

"I have a place to go to…" Bruce cut in quickly. He wasn't about to burden this kind stranger anymore if he could help it.

James went silent for about a minute or so, looking at Bruce with green eyes that made him rethink his 'passed out in naked human form and not Hulk form in front of James's door' hypothesis, as if James knew some embarrassing secret of Bruce but was merciful enough not to say anything about it.

Bruce's heart skipped a beat. Did he…?

Then the moment passed, and James was standing up with his coat in his hands. "Yeah, well… come by my place if you need to… " He pushed a name card into Bruce's hand before carting the dirty dishes off to the sink.

'James P. Evans' The name card announced in neat cursive letters. 'PhD, Museum of Exotic Arts and Hogwarts Archive, Curator'.

The rest was a flurry of activities in which Bruce found himself pushed into the next room, then into a pair of rain boots only big enough to not be uncomfortable on him, then into an oversized coat that most definitely came from a second hand shop, and into an old pair of leather gloves to fend against New York's chilly disposition this time of the year.

Then suddenly Bruce was standing in a busy street in front of an old building.

"Is this it?" He blurted out to James, who was standing next to him on the pavement. James blinked at his question, uncomprehending.

"Do you just… what… take in a strange naked man you found on the street, let him sleep the night, feed him breakfast, and then let him go… no questions asked?" Bruce elaborated.

This time, the silence between them was filled up with the noises of the steady streams of pedestrian passing by, over, and through them.

"Do you want me to ask questions, Bruce?"

Bruce blinked as his first name rolled out of James's mouth with a warmth and certainty more befitting for old friends… or lovers. Not even Natasha Romanoff had done that to him, not in their first meeting at least.

"I don't really need to know a man's full story to know he's in need of help, do I?"

Bruce opened his mouth, closed it. He was suddenly struck dumb by James's question. James patted his shoulder once. "Well, I still have work, and I'll be late if we keep staying here. Off you go, Bruce…" There it was, again, '_Bruce'_, not Banner, or Mr. Banner. James said his name as if he had said it for decades. "Have a nice day."

And just like that he was suddenly swallowed by the sea of people, off to his Museum of Exotic Arts and Hogwarts Archive, leaving Bruce alone and flabbergasted on a busy Manhattan street.

* * *

Bruce wandered the streets of Mahattan for exactly five minutes before being unceremoniously scooped up by a team of SHIELD agents. Then, before he could so much as blink, he found himself face-to-face with a very irate SHIELD director in a conference room of the Helicarrier.

"Dr. Banner, are you saying that you spent the night in an apartment in Harlem, Manhattan, while half of SHIELD personnel combed the street looking for you?"

Bruce opened his secondhand coat in reply. "He even lent me his clothes."

Nick Fury eyeballed him coldly. "Dr. Banner, you were Green when you left. You left a trail of broken buildings and ruined streets across half of New York. If I weren't the director of SHIELD, I would have said how lucky we were that no one managed to snap a picture of a very green, very angry giant. But because I am the director of SHIELD, I will have to fill out the bills for several hushing campaigns or we will all find ourselves in a sea of screaming journalists. If the Helicarrier weren't hanging by a hairline from another billion dollars of collateral damage, I would have sent the other half of SHIELD after you. After all this, you're telling me you spent the night sleeping in an apartment in Har-motherfucking-lem, Manhattan?"

"I was passed out. I didn't remember a thing." Bruce parried, carefully keeping a lid on the Other Guy. "You knew this when you tried to recruit me. Are you having second thoughts now?"

That put a stop to Nick Fury's oncoming tirade. Bruce watched as the director of SHIELD squeezed the bridge of his nose, then heaved a long-suffering sigh.

"I'm sorry. It wasn't your fault."

"That's alright. I don't remember much, but I'm guessing Loki is driving us all around the bend."

"He is." Nick acquiesced, before pushing a row of buttons on his fancy desk. "James, you said?"

"Evans. James P Evans. He's a museum curator." Bruce offered reluctantly. He didn't want to give James more problems – the man had pretty much saved him from a very embarrassing awakening on the streets unconditionally – but there was no hiding anything from SHIELD. If Bruce had tried, it might have made matters worse. Plus, James hadn't really done anything except providing help to an unlikely recipient. Bruce was sure the most SHIELD was going to do was put a few bugs in his apartments and got some feelers out where he worked. He was a museum curator for a museum named Exotic Arts and Hogwarts Archive for Christ's sake! "Lean build. Not tall, but not short either. About five-feet-nine I think. Black hair. Green eyes. Hard to miss those. Oh, and I think I saw a pair of glasses on his table."

For a fraction of a second, Nick Fury stiffened at Bruce's descriptions. If it were an agent of SHIELD standing in front of him, he or she might have detected the almost imperceptible signs of alarm coming from Nick. But Bruce Banner was a physicist and, on some occasions, an angry green giant, so he saw nothing and thought nothing of it.

"You appear none the worse for wear, doctor." Nick said after a long string of pleasantries and situational updates, cracking rapidly on his keyboard. "You must be tired. You should get some rest. Before you do that though, you should probably go for check in with the Med department. We never know right?"

"Will do." Bruce threw a curt line as he walked out the door, straining in his ill-fitting clothes.

Left alone, Nick Fury waited as he listened to the sound of the physicist's footsteps down the hall of the newly repaired Helicarrier. When he was sure he could hear nothing more from Bruce Banner, he picked up his BlackBerry, dialed a number hardcoded in the phone's memory.

"Grey?" He barked out, then waited for confirmation from the other end. "I'm sending doctor Banner to you. Give him a thorough check… and a deep scan. Take his blood sample too. No, don't let him know. Not yet. Anything that happened to him in the last twenty-four hours, I want to know. All of them."

He put down the phone, pushed down a sudden anxiety in his stomach, and waited.

* * *

The entirety of the scan went on for a full two hours, during which Bruce Banner put up some haft-heart protests. The blood sample, however, only took about fifteen minutes to go from Bruce's vein to the other end of a long string of bioinformatics analyzers.

So it was after this fifteen minutes that Jacquelin 'Jack' Ellsbeth Grey, PhD, geneticist, found herself staring at some very peculiar blood result. It took another five minutes for Jack to force herself into fully understanding the analyzer's readout, then another five minute for her to get up from her little cubicle, walked to the water corner where she helped herself to a steaming cup of coffee and watched as her blood sugar rate went up through the roof – Energy, her mind crowed, clarity! – then went back to the machine to punch in the command to reanalyze.

She stood there for ten minutes, turning her cup of coffee this way and that while conjuring up images of Nick Fury in a pink tutu and diamond tiara saying 'motherfucking motherfuckers' and her trying to explain to him what the blood test was telling her. Then the machine pinged loudly and vomited up a piece of paper which Jack immediately snatched up from its metal jaw.

Her eyes ran down the diarrhea-worth of black words on it, coming from conclusion, to denial, to conclusion, and then finally to resignation.

There was something in Dr. Bruce Banner's blood. The result read. Something strong enough that it acted as a tranquilizer against the Hulk! The sudden spike and ebb in Bruce's blood chemistry read. There was a part where Jack separated 'this thing' and tried to make out its composition. Its structure is halfway between snake's venom – from a kind of snake that did not exist on this Earth, said a venom specialist Jack had rang up at three in the morning in Chicago (It don't exist! Or I'll eat my pillow! He screamed at her through the phone as his girlfriend grumbled for him to come back to bed) – and some kind of cure-all elixir – which Jack's own PhD degree protested because there was no such thing as a cure all in the annals of her doctorate.

A poison and a cure both, but that still wasn't the kicker. Jack found as she went down further the machine's readout.

The punch line of this bad joke was… 'the thing' would have been human blood if it weren't for one little deviation in its DNA structure. One little deviation right smack-dab in the ninety-two percent of genetic materials all life forms on Earth share… which ultimately meant that whoever owned this blood did not evolve anywhere on Earth.

Jack knocked back her head and downed her second cup of coffee in one go, then got up and rang Nick Fury. As the other side picked up with a curt 'Fury', Jack concentrated hard on the image of Nick in a pink tutu giving a flawless rendition of Swan Lake as she reiterated her analysis to him.

Their conversation went on for half an hour before Nick hang up and Jack went back for a third cup of coffee (Clarity!), then Nick called and they were back in the thick of their conversation again.

Five hours later, Jack found herself trailing after Fury on the way to the main conference room while contemplating asking for a pay rise in her head.

Nick opened his meeting with the full members of the Avengers Assemble with a clap, dismissing Tony Stark's jabs with a pointed look, and a long-winded introduction that went like this.

"It took seven years of bitter warfare for the Alliance to end World War 2. The Americans ended the Japanese regime with two atomic bombs in nine days. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagashaki, the few that still live, call us butchers, death bringers. The unveiling of atomic bomb technology halted the world and plunged us into a Cold War that lasted for forty-five years, ending with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Even to this day, the mere rumor that particular terrorist states hold even the scrapped blueprints of atomic technology is enough to send the world into panic. And it all started with those first two bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man. What we just discovered today, my fellow Avengers, might very well turn the Boy and the Man into schoolyard bullies."

In a café in Manhattan, a green-eyed wizard sneezed violently.

* * *

**End Chapter 1**

To my watchers who think I can only write dark and brutal fics. I so could write cracktastic humor.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: The Avengers universe and all its characters belong to Marvel. Likewise with Harry Potter.

**Chapter 2**: In which a conference is held and a miracle happens

* * *

'Whoever these people are…' Harry thought to himself as he settled down for lunch break. '…they're very good at what they do.'

He popped open a Coke and unrolled the plastic film covering his lunch box. The aroma of Malaysian grilled chicken, Thai Tom Yam Gung, and boiled Jasmine rice filled the room… along with a sing-song voice.

"I smeeeeellll something." Said a slightly nasal female voice, followed by a headful of curly brown hair peeking into the little office designated the curator's territory. Harry's territory.

"Malaysian grilled chicken…" Harry narrated, a smile kicking up the corner of his mouth. "…with jalapenos pepper, two, one teaspoon coriander, one teaspoon cumin, rough chopped, marinated for a day, a hundred and sixty degree grill until all sides are perfectly brown…" He made a cut with his knife, flaunting a honey colored, well-grilled, slickly hot piece of chicken. "… served with a side of Sri Lankan coconut milk and lemon basil. Help yourself" He gestured to a second set of cutlery on the table.

"Doc, your girlfriend is to die for." The curly brown-haired head moved into the room, followed by a decidedly curvy female physiology. A nametag was pinned on an extremely curvy female top, fluttering on a dramatically sloping female hill as she walked. It read Donna J Tenningston – Assistant.

"I cook for myself."

Donna set a stack of documents on his table, right next to his Alienware laptop, before sitting herself on a chair opposite him. "Marry me." She said, fluttering her eyelashes lasciviously and pushing her chest out. The buttons of her top strained with the move.

Harry waggled his eyebrows. "Brain, looks, **and** cooking skill. I'm a catch, ain't I?"

Donna pouted, showing the wet side of her lips. "If you had been wearing your 'kiss the cook' apron, I'd have filled that prompt in a heartbeat."

"Leave your kink meme obsession at the door please. You make me blush ma'am."

"You just can't handle the heat." Donna flipped her hair, putting on her sassy voice. She had gone for neon green lipstick that day and combined, they made some funny effect on her visage. "I have long since made peace with the fact that all good men have some percentage of the homosexual persuasion in their blood."

Harry hid his laughter with a cough, helping it down with a liberal gulp of Coke. Not really. But him being what he was, he didn't fancy getting too close to a woman only to be outed at either the delivery room or the obstetrician ward of a hospital for incompatible DNA. That would have been awkward… and painful, and painfully awkward, and awkwardly painful… and everything else in between.

"If I can't fantasize about you and me, darling, at least I can fantasize about you and other man… men… preferably men."

This time he coughed for real. Donna eyed the brilliant blush erupting on his face with great relish and immediately he knew what was going to come next. With a flourish, she pulled out a piece of newspaper from her purse and held it out for him to see. 'Stuttgart Riots' The paper announced. 'Megalomaniac Man in Leathers – Hooligan or Terrorist?'. Aside the blip line was a gray-tone picture of a man. The photographer had gotten a good shot and the camera must have been a high-tech high-definition reporter type mechanical camera because the picture was so clear Harry could see even the individual strand on Leather Man's eyelashes.

"Very nice leather." He commented. "But I thought the flavor of the week is… what's his name again… Stark? Stork? Pork?" It had become a kind of game between them. Every week, Donna would bring in a candidate for her James' fantasy partner contest and see if she could get a raise out of him. So far she had had a few successes, but not many.

"The name is Tony Stark, ignorant." She sneered at him over her plus-two prescription glasses. "Playboy, inventor, billionaire philanthropist and currently ranked among the top ten most eligible bachelor of the planet. But no. Stark is the fandom's bicycle, any true disciple of the RPS sect could tell you that. You can have him next week. This thing though." She gripped the paper, brought it to her face, and smooched it soundly, before getting back on track, shivering with… something he didn't dare put a name to. "This… is the exotic flavor, the rare meat that only comes once in a while. So you've got to catch him, snatch him up before he's back in his bush. Ooohhh, just look at him. Those legs. Those hips. That cheekbone. The swagger. The leather… I heard he called himself god of mischief, or something like that. Well if he is, he can mischief my panty any day… or better, yours."

"Don't forget the metallic shoulder pieces and neck decoration… and that horny helmet. Extra blingbling. A man of money and taste. Very bad boy-ish, perfect for your dub-con tumblr followers." Harry added helpfully.

"Oohh… my ovary kneels before him and weeps."

Harry leaned back, crossed his legs and looked past Donna's shoulder to a mirror hung on the wall. He saw glimpses of people, glimpses that only he, and no one else on the entire planet, could see. People wearing the usual black suit ensemble, talking quietly over their ear pieces.

A thought resurfaced in his head, immediately muting out Donna and her spontaneous fangasm.

'Whoever these people are, they're very good at what they do.' He tilted his head and the glimpses became clearer, like a scan on zoom mode. 'Who are these guys?' He watched them move about the block surrounding his museum, their body language crisp and economic in a way that told of militaristic training. He scratched out IRS tax officers and the local funeral house service on the list he'd made in his head.

No ring, he noted. Nine men, eight women. Aged between twenty-five and forty, and not a ring on one of them. He hummed a vague reply to whatever Donna was ranting about as he turned this new observation over on his head. Very professional. He'd dealt with as high as Secret Service before, dealt with them and erased their knowledge and wiped out their databases on him, and even the odd Secret Service agents had their wedding rings somewhere on their person. Perhaps not on their fingers, but somewhere on their persons.

These new people. No ring. Not even stashed somewhere in their undies or sewn into their flesh. Left the rings home. Didn't want to drag in the spouses and kids. That was something no training ever gave. That was experience… from having dealt with the dangerous and the extremely ruthless before, dealt with them enough times that it became a habit not just for one but for all.

That fact alone was very telling.

He did another scan, smiling at Donna's compliment on his cooking skill.

Guns. Bugs, internal and external, on their clothes and implanted in their bodies. Quite a bit of gadgetries. The usual package. They were making circles around his block, planting a perimeter of locator bugs, but not coming in anywhere closer.

Scouts. He realized. Which meant the real task force had yet to come.

He swallowed a spoonful of rice and sour Tom Yam Gung soup as he kept up the conversation with Donna, then opened his laptop with one hand.

"You're such a workaholic, doc." Donna commented. He parried with self-depreciating humor, fingers flying on the keyboard. In no time at all, he'd brought up several windows from the national identity database, the one keyed exclusively for law enforcement and national security purposes. Also the one database, if hacked, cracked, infiltrated, or violated in anyway, would guarantee the perpetrator a lifetime imprisonment in the onshore equivalent of Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp under terrorist charges. As he thought, someone had been checking in on Doctor James P Evans, extensively. He found their fingerprints on his bio, his medical profiles, criminal history or lack thereof, his school records, acquaintances, travel logs. He found his virtual social profiles had been crosschecked and matrixed with the government grid, a maneuver usually performed on e-espionage suspects. The fingerprints went deeper, up the family tree and history he'd fabricated for himself. Something funny was going on with his bank and investment accounts and a quick check revealed that the internet and phone grid of his apartment block had been bugged.

Very thorough work. He complimented in his head as he turned back to Donna.

"Say… when was the last time you had a vacation from work?"

"Dunno. Since… forever I guess. Can't leave my poor doc all alone, can I?"

"Well… how about one? Right now." He flipped his laptop around so she could see the screen, which, by that time, showed the contents of a rather flashy email. Donna arched an eyebrow at him, pushed up her glasses on a classic nerd move, before leaning forward.

"Dear Dr. Evans blahblahblah… druidic foundings blahblah, thesis of Dr. Whatever as well as the showing of a private collections of Voodoo and Asian blood magic arts… conference held July 14th in Bali. What? But that's tomorrow!"

"Keep going."

"We're sorry for the inconvenience but will greatly appreciate your presence at our conference. Enclosed is an account number as well as contact info if you wish to join us. We have prepared you appropriate lodgings at the Naga hotel and beach resort in Bali. All travelling cost incurred on your behalf will be reimbursed. Yadda yadda yadda… Well, doc, I don't see the word vacation anywhere. And this is addressed to you, not to me."

"Not if I appoint you as my proxy. And in case you don't know, Bali is a world famous tourist destination. I heard the beaches there rank among the world's top ten. And for us Hogwarts museum geeks, voodoo and blood magic are…"

"…kinky!"

"… well, I was going for adequately enjoyable job function, but that works too. So, how about it?"

"Your serious, doc?"

"As hell." He said, smiling from ear to ear.

Donna pushed her geek glasses up, shining malevolently. "You're hiding something from me, spill it. I'm your assistant. I'm responsible for every facets of your life… or so you said in your job posting."

"I'm going on a date."

"With who?" Donna's spectacles glowed ominously, she grinning like a shark scenting blood.

"Your leather-decked, horny-helmet-wearing God of Mischief." He answered, not missing a beat.

The silence stretched out like a plastic string between them. Donna put her fork in her mouth, sucking on it as she eyed him from behind her glasses. "The earliest flight leaves in four hours. You don't want to miss it." He said at last, breaking the standoff.

Donna's fork left her mouth with a wet pop. She grinned saucily at him, apparently already decided that Harry's paid vacation bribe and need for privacy this time outweighed her penchant for curiosity and controlling streak. "Take pictures, doc." She said, breathily. "And by pictures, I mean the NC21 type."

He gave something between a cough and laugh, eyes never leaving the mirror behind Donna.

"I love my job." Donna announced as she stood, gathered her stuff and throwing them haphazardly into her Jimmy Choo Romeo White Crocs-tamp designer handbag. "I would say I'd like to have your babies in case you need a surrogate mom, but too bad. You're already pregnant in my mpreg RPS fic… and I haven't decided on the father yet." And with that, she sauntered out his office on her on-sale Gucci pumps.

And all of a sudden, Harry was alone, in a museum he'd built himself and named Museum of Exotic Arts and Hogwarts Archive, with a mirror showing him agents from a militaristic covert organization even more capable than the Secret Services.

He was silent for a full fifteen minutes, didn't do anything, just sat there and stared at the glowing screen of his laptop, didn't read anything, didn't move an inch, just sat, and thought.

Donna. He thought. Donna was a good kid, from a normal family. Normal education, normal college loan, normal friends and boyfriends, normal everything. There was nothing out of the ordinary about her if he didn't count her collection of pirated CDs, FF7 yaoi doujinshi, and her penchant for writing stories of real people having homosexual love life. Hopefully, she could get out before the real task force hit. Hopefully, they let her go with only a few bugs on her.

The reservation he'd made for her in Bali stretched for about a week, and Harry planned to resolve… whatever was coming… within that timeframe. And in the case he couldn't, he did leave a few contingency plans in that region of the planet. Maybe a false alarm on another Tsunami, or a level nine earthquake, or a typhoon, or something along that line. There were so many ways to derail the schedules of travel agencies, so any of that would do really.

His thinking done, he stood up, glanced out the window where he knew they must be watching him and silently summoned his own Auror training in preparation.

* * *

Miles and miles away, a semi-formal meeting was taking place on a funnily named aircraft.

"What the hell are you on this time, Nick?" Said a certain playboy billionaire philanthropist who thankfully did not have the least inkling that a museum assistant, miles and miles away, had just referred to him as the fandom's bicycle. Thank gods above for small mercies.

Nick Fury shot him a look before relinquishing his stand to a mousy-looking scientist. "Dr. Grey, if you don't mind."

"Not at all, Tutu…uh… I mean, director Fury." Jack took the podium, eyeing her audience nervously. A team of people, consisting of a demigod, a couple of master spies, a super soldier, a weapon dealer whose favorite past time included donning a red suit of armor and beating bad guys to a pulp, and a physicist with breathtaking anger management issue who was, in the right circumstances, fully capable of breaking Jack like a toothpick with his pinkies and his toes, using only one at a time. And they were all looking at her expectantly, with varying degree of irritability. No pressure, Jack.

"Right, uh… lemme start at the beginning." She mumbled into her clipped-on Mike, silently considering smearing Nick Fury's coffee mug with concentrated cyanide in her head. "This…" She pointed and the central screen lighted up above her head. "… is Dr. Banner's blood."

That turned out to be a bad way to begin.

"My blood!" Bruce Banner spontaneously exploded. Agent Romanoff, who was sitting next to him, stirred, her gun visible under the table.

"Uummm, which I took under director Fury's order." Jack scrambled to redirect the incoming danger.

"My blood!" Bruce Banner snarled at Nick Fury, who took the brunt of Bruce's fury with his usual Fury-esque unfettered calmness.

"Dr. Banner, seven hours ago, you came back to us from the apartment of a man named James P Evans, correct?"

The central screen changed, split in the middle, one side showing Banner's blood sample, the other showing a mug shot of a black-haired green-eyed man, an info sheet right next to him. And here a funny thing happened. The moment Bruce Banner saw the man, James Evans, he deflated visibly.

"He didn't do anything." He said, looking darkly at Nick Fury. "Except having the kindness to help out a man he didn't know."

"We'll see." Nick Fury replied succinctly. "Later, when we talked, you mentioned that you believed you had been out cold upon ground contact and that was the condition in which James P Evans found you, correct?"

"I don't see what that has to do with…"

"Dr. Banner, It is a yes or no question? Yes? Or no?"

"… yes." Bruce Banner acquiesced grudgingly.

Nick Fury simply nodded, taking no pleasure in having forced his answer. "Then I will have to inform you that you were wrong… regrettably." He snapped a finger. Half of the central screen dimmed, James Evans's half. "After we got the situation of the Helicarrier under control, we immediately went after you, Dr. Banner. We tracked you to downtown Manhattan… based on the trail of wreckages you left behind. Contrary to what you believed, you were in full Hulk mode when you landed… and a good while after."

That caught Bruce Banner by surprise.

"But…" The physicist started but Nick Fury cut right in.

"I thought the same." Said the director of SHIELD, eyeing the rest of the room's occupants. "I asked myself. How… could an ordinary man, an Anthropologist doctor and museum curator, got the Hulk into his apartment? … which is a full mile away from the closest wreckage you left behind, Dr. Banner. Under what circumstance did he meet the Hulk for that matter? I was curious… and suspicious, as I'm wont to be as the director of SHIELD. Even more, the report I got from my tracker teams were full of holes. The teams sent to Manhattan reported no eye witnesses. Dr. Banner landed amidst daylight, in the heart of one of the most populated area of New York and we couldn't find a single person who could point us to where a big, green, angry giant had gone. I knew then that something was amiss… and with our situation with Loki and his magic… well…"

Bruce Banner went silent.

"So I asked Dr. Banner what the man was like, and this is his answer." Nick Fury snapped another finger. An audio clip started to play and the clear recorded voice of Bruce Banner filled the room.

"_Lean build. Not tall, but not short either. About five-feet-nine I think. Black hair. Green eyes. Hard to miss those.__" _

"Green eyes." Thor echoed, a look of recognition on his face. "Loki has green eyes and black hair."

"Wait. Wasn't his eyes blue?" Tony Stark interjected, throwing a look at Natasha Romanoff. "His eyes were blue, right? You saw him up close and they were blue."

"They were blue. Electric blue… and insane." Said Natasha, eyeing the picture of James P Evans still on the central screen. The good doctor, if that was who he was, had the face of a lifelong intellect. Soft, gentle, his eyes, a vibrant leaf green, warm and possessing none of the madness she'd seen on Loki.

"Loki's eyes are green." Thor stressed.

"They were green. We had confirmation from several sources. It seems their current color is an effect of the Cosmic Spear he carries with him."

That was all the confirmation Thor needed. Immediately, the god of Thunder took up arms. "So this James is Loki's disguise? Then what are we waiting for?" And he made for the door.

"It is not so simple, Thor." Said Nick, stopping the demigod in his track. "Dr. James Evans is not Loki, though I instigated my investigation on him under that premise. He is… something else."

"Something else? I don't like something else. In my experience, that's Fury-speak for we don't know what that guy can do but we know he can do enough to guarantee the attention of the full Avengers Initiative." Tony Stark mumbled none too quietly.

Steve Rogers, in contrast, got right to the punch. "Then what is he?"

"Dr. Grey?" Fury shot Jack a look, stepping back clear of the centre.

"Umm, well… he's a… umm… ahem…" Jack fiddled with the hem of her lab coat; giving speech to a room full of super dangerous people wasn't on her job description. "… he's an alien…" She managed at last.

"That's… unexpected." Tony Stark arched an eyebrow at her, crossing his arm.

Jack's scientist pride bristled under the man's look and she spontaneously launched into her full lecture mode. "Well, Mr. Stark, if you have a better idea that complies with all the basic genetic architecture rules then I'd like to hear it." She turned away before he could make a comeback, leaning down on her control screen, calling up info slides after info slides.

"Under director Fury's order, we took a sample of Dr. Banner's blood." She narrated. "Dr. Banner's blood was subsequently submitted through a series of bioinformatics analyzers." A row of machine holograms appeared. "These are all top of the line, capable of dissecting and extracting bioinfo from the smallest trace amount of bio materials. They can separate and deep scan even blood chemical atoms, or skin flakes. We weren't sure what we were looking for, but we knew we needed to be thorough."

"Uh… English please?"

"I tested his blood… for abnormalities." Jack huffed.

"Well, that's better. I presume you found something."

"According to Dr. Banner's blood chemicals, he was in Hulk mode for exactly one hour, seven minutes and twenty-two seconds before it was forcibly ended."

"Forcibly ended?"

"A foreign compound was introduced into his blood. This compound acted as a tranquilizer and forced Dr. Banner to revert back to his normal appearance."

"That's not possible." Bruce Banner sprang up from his seat.

"It is, Dr. Banner. Your blood does not lie. If you'd just check the spot behind your shoulder, you will see the intravenous injection mark the… well… we presumed… the needle left."

All of a sudden, Bruce felt the weight of the stares of a dozen people on his back, right on the spot behind his shoulder. In his mind, he knew what that Grey woman was spouting was impossible. Not even anti-tank missile made a dent on the Other Guy, much less needles. Yet his fingers itch with the need to know, to find out. He reined himself in though. If he did check, it would be in the privacy of his own quarter and not here like a circus act for them to see.

Seeing that Bruce Banner had no more input for her, Jack barreled on.

"When I figured this out, I immediately set to separate this tranquilizer compound from Dr. Banner's blood. It is a trace amount that required utmost delicacy in handling it. But I did it." She smiled triumphantly. "I then submitted it to the same procedure I used for Dr. Banner's blood. I found out that it actually is a combination of three components, one main one that holds two sub-components."

The central screen lighted up again, and the image of Bruce's blood was replaced by a three slides panel, each showing something different.

"The first component…" the first slide enlarged, showing a string of twisted black barbs. "… is a kind of venom. It has the same chemical structure and characteristics of snake venom… except that a venom specialist has confirmed that it does not match with any type of known snake venoms."

"And the fact that it was strong enough to knock out the Hulk."

"It knocked out the Hulk?" Natasha carefully kept her interest under lid as she said this, not wanting to send the wrong message. However, her being the master spy that she was, this was the kind of priceless information that would become very useful in the future, especially in the case they had another repeat of a Hulk episode while on a delicate aircraft.

"It attacks muscle cells, blood, and nervous system with a speed and fervor unheard of before. If administered alone, it would have killed the victim by heart and lung failure within minutes, even before deformation of muscle settled in. As far as I can tell, it is the most lethal acting poison I've ever seen, bar none. If this venom was administered alone, it would have killed Dr. Banner… regardless of whether he was in Hulk mode or not."

"And seeing as the Hulk's structural integrity is at the very least, on par, with normal Asgardians, we assume that this venom would also work on them." Nick added, shooting a pointed look at Thor. "Is there a kind of snake like this on Asgard?"

Thor looked stumped for a second before shaking his head violently. "I… no. We don't have such filthy beasts. The land of Asgardian is… no…."

"What about on Jotunheim?"

"Not that I know of. Though it they do, they would have tried to use it on us Asgardian by now."

"Sounds reasonable." Nick acquiesced before turning back on Grey again. "Please continue."

"Right, right, so…" Jack fumbled with her control. The first slide of the venom retreated and the second slide took its place. On it was a glowing string of… something. "This is the second component."

"What is it?" Steve Rogers leaned in.

"Well, uh, we don't know." Jack blushed, wringing her hands. "Analyzed down to atomic level, it is no different from H20, normal water, except it glows in the dark. However, I have been able to observe its function. It is the main reason why Dr. Banner is not… well… deceased… right now. Umm…"

From across the room, Bruce Banner speared Jack with a dark look. She stammered, for a moment dearly wishing for a nice steaming cup of coffee to calm her neurotic tendencies… or maybe a pair of glasses. Yep, glasses. She wished she had them like the stereotypical image of scientists and other geek sub-species within the human race. If she had one, she could at least busy her hands with pushing them up and down.

"To put it bluntly, it's a genetic stabilizer agent."

"A what?" Pretty much half of the room's occupants wear an expression on their faces that said they clearly didn't get what she was saying.

"A genetic stabilizer agent. See…" With a few clicks, Jack summoned up a short clip showing a double helix coming apart. "This is what happened when we get hurt, in anyway. When we cut our fingers, a breakdown of genetic material occurs. When we grow old, a breakdown of genetic material occurs. When we get sick, a breakdown of genetic material occurs, cells being attacked with viruses and all that. When we die, a breakdown of genetic material occurs. Our bodies decompose. Now, I guess this is not well-known, but the transformation process of Dr. Banner is very similar to this. His genetic structure enters a phase of rapid changes, DNA breaking apart and forming new strings. Every time he becomes the Hulk, Bruce Banner essentially dies… on a genetic level… and the Hulk is born… on a genetic level. And vice versa for the reversed. You get what I'm saying?"

She got a few nods.

"Well, good. This agent here…" She pulled the glowing H2O hologram slide to the foreground. "… what it does is reverse the process of genetic breakdown. It stops it entirely and stabilizes the gene."

"In other word, it's the fountain of Youth and Eternal Life." Nick Fury interjected, on the behalf of Steve Roger's increasingly befuddled face.

"Uh, right. So yes, this second agent, this elixir is the main reason why Dr. Banner is not dead right now. My hypothesis is that, the snake venom was used to first knock out the Hulk and break him down on a genetic level. The elixir is then used to counteract the effect of the venom as well as stabilizing the genetic structure back into those of the normal Dr. Banner."

"Wait, wait. Are you saying this… whatever it is… killed Bruce, then resurrected him." Tony Stark interjected.

"Well, yes, in a way of speaking."

"But you said you didn't know what this elixir is."

"Yes, I mean no. It looks like water. It's built like water, but it obviously is not water."

"If you don't know what it is, then how can you be sure it does what you say?" The man pressed, ever the skeptic among the bunch.

Before Jack could so much as open her mouth, Nick Fury had planted himself between her and Tony Stark. "Allow me, Dr. Grey." He said and with a wave of his hand, called up an image that had everyone in the room gasping or breaking out in surprise.

The central hologram screen now showed a streaming clip of an infirmary room. There was nothing special about the room. A square eighty-eighty box of metal and concrete, as was everything else on the Helicarrier. A bed. A top table. An IVR line and life support machines. Even a quaint little flower vase on the top table. What drew everyone's attention though, was the figure on the bed. A man with a round face and receding hairline, middle-age, pale and sickly and breathing through an Oxygen mask strapped to his nose and mouth.

Agent Phil Coulson.

"But he's dead." Steve Rogers murmured, not yet believing in what his eyes were seeing.

"Was dead." Nick Fury corrected. "His life signal was gone. His heart stopped. Brain activities near flat line. Anywhere else and they would have put him in a coffin. We very nearly did the same but then…" He turned and looked at Jack. "… I got the report from Dr. Grey, on this second agent. We termed it the White Agent, as opposed to the Black Venom. I didn't believe Dr. Grey at first, but she convinced me, and I figured we had nothing to lose. So… we … experimented."

"Experimented?"

"Dr. Grey separated the White Agent from the alien compound. Only a trace amount of it was left, and it wouldn't have been possible if five billions US dollars weren't invested into the Helicarrier scientific equipments. But we did it. The amount we got couldn't be put on any kind of measurement system there was so little of it. But the moment we got it into agent Coulson. He…" An expression passed over Nick Fury's face. Jack would have called it a rare moment of softness in a lifetime of granite hard if she hadn't worked for the man for nearly five years and counting. "… stopped dying."

Half of the people inside the room were standing now, some in respect, some awe. Tony Stark was standing, big surprise there. Jack didn't think the man would stand for anyone short of the current Miss World. Steve Rogers was standing, ramrod and all old style military, and so were agent Romanoff and agent Hill.

"He's not anywhere near a clean bill of health yet, last I checked with the med department, and that's no surprise to us. If the White Agent had been fighting back the Hulk, we didn't expect for it to have a lot of firepower left. But at least we could keep him going for a good while more now, and that's already more than we could hope for."

Afterward, the room lapsed into shell-shocked silence, with people, demigod, master spies and billionaires alike just watching the clip of Phil Coulson sleeping on his infirmary bed. Since the beginning of their little meet-and-greet, Jack had noticed the dubious looks sent her and director Fury's way.

For Jack, that was the usual faire of happenstance. Science… real honest-to-god daily updated and informed science was usually greeted with doubt and incomprehension in most places, and SHIELD, despite its high-tech fast-science nature, wasn't a lot different.

Jack had walked into the room, knowing that she was going to get a lot of hard-edged stares for daring to talk about things nobody dreamed could be possible, things like a venom strong enough to bring down a creature the US government had poured billions of dollars in to take down… and failed, things like water that glowed in the dark and cured cancer and resurrected dead people. Faced with the new and the incredible, people instinctively reached for suspicion first. Hell, Jack could barely believe it herself. Even now, her scientific teachings rebelled against all these new findings.

So she had walked in armed with an armada of big words and scientific images, hoping against hope that while she tried to convince these people that she could convince herself too.

Now though… now she stood among the silent mass and watched Steve Roger make a cross on his chest, face reverent; and Tony Stark with his hands lax by his side and his mouth hang open so big it might just touch the floor, and Maria Hills with her eyes wet and red-rimmed; and in the backdrop Jack fancied she could even hear the small trembling gasps agent Romanoff was trying to stem.

After Steve Roger's 'but he's dead', no one said anything else. No 'nay'. No 'Impossible, it must be fake', just a kind of silence that said these people didn't quite fully believe just yet but also wanted to believe so hard.

A simple clip of Phil Coulson breathing, living while he should be dead had done what a lecture and an army of scientific backings couldn't do. Make these people (and Jack) believe, as all unexpected good things amidst a series of bad happenings tended to do.

Then a minute later, Tony Stark jerked out of his stupor with a whoop and a shake of his head.

"So, Black Agent is a super venom. White Agent is a Phoenix Down. Lovely. What's the third one? The big guy! Bring it on."

"The… big guy?" Fury deadpanned.

"Yes! The big guy. The boss, of the three, as the lovely Dr. Grey told us since the beginning." Said Tony Stark, completely disregarding the dirty looks Steve Rogers was shooting him. "In my experience, the biggest, best, and worst things are always saved for last."

Now that got the other people's attention. Jack could see it on their faces clear as day. The Black and White Agent alone were already pushing the envelope. What could be bigger than that?

"Truth be told, Fury." Stark said, his eyes suddenly sharp and full of intents. "I didn't really believe you when you told us SHIELD had discovered something that…" he made an air quote with his fingers. "… made the Man and the Boy into schoolyard bullies. After this though, I confess I'm starting to believe." Stark smiled and all of a sudden Jack could see why they called him a weapon dealer, why Stark made such a successful weapon dealer to begin with. "… These things are all very good. But Nick. We all know this isn't what SHIELD is about. A surefire cure for death and cancer is all very nice, and poison can be useful, but that's not what you're about Nick. They don't make you go all warm and tingly."

Jack saw Steve frown but even the Big Captain didn't stop Stark. Even he wanted to hear what was next.

"The Tesseract does." Stark kept on. "As do weapons of mass destruction, like the ones you reverse engineered from the Asgardian Destroyer. Those are the things that SHIELD is all about. Those are the things that make you go warm and tingly. Especially now when we're forced to deal with Loki and his army from space."

Bruce Banner and Thor shared an alarmed look but no one said a thing. No one interrupted Stark.

"So tell us Nick. Tell us about the third agent, the one that makes the Man and the Boy into schoolyard bullies... the one that you're going to make weapons out of."

Nick Fury went silent for a while, then he pushed a button on his controller and called the third slide to the front view.

* * *

**End Chapter 2**

* * *

Go eat Malaysian Grilled Chicken and Thai Tom Yam Gung. They're way better than Shawarma (run away from Shawarma fans).


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: The Avengers universe and all its characters belong to Marvel. Likewise with Harry Potter.

**Chapter 3**: Serious Business Gets Serious

* * *

By the time Natasha got to her little locker in the arm room, it was already half past six and the sun was on its way to a glorious end on the surface of New York Bay, showering the room she was standing in in a brilliant array of red, yellow, and purple light. Natasha's shadow ran the length of the room, painting a dark path from her feet to the opposite wall. She opened the door of her locker with one click. The high-tech sensor picked up the flakes of her skin from the air, DNA scanned them, and digi-approved within seconds. Inside her locker, aside from her customary black cat-suits, multi-purposes grenades, and a variety of highly-lethal small-arms was a customized high-grade issued M-98 sniper rifle a.k.a the Widow Maker.

Natasha's Widow Maker.

She closed her hand around the side handle, right above the barrel, and with one heave, lifted it clean off its case. Immediately, it felt as if a small part of her had returned, a small part Natasha hadn't noticed had drifted off when she wasn't looking. She brought it to eye-level, admiring it as she would an old friend. It was a severe beauty, as cutting as its name. Twenty-eight pounds of pure firepower, delivering death from afar in her hands. Its weight pulled at her muscles and reassured her inner little Natasha… who was currently screaming for blood, death, action and strawberry-flavored lollipops (preferably delivered by old men who liked to taunt little redheaded girls with promises of candies and didn't deliver).

She wasn't Hawkeye, but with this girl, she could guarantee a one-shot one-kill policy that Clint and his fancy bows and arrows found too crude for their taste.

"The Widow Maker." A voice said from behind her back. Natasha turned, brought her Widow up, aimed. Tony Stark's face appeared in her scope. What a tempting target. Natasha had half a mind to ask Stark if he happened to have strawberry-flavored lollipops on him. If he did, well… she'd just make her apology to Pepper Potts later. From one independent and career-driven woman to another, Natasha was confident she could make the other hear reasons. Before she could contemplate her question further, Stark gripped the barrel of her Widow, turned it aside and made a show of admiring it.

"The Widow Maker." He reiterated. "Manufactured by Rosenkhov Co in 2002. Base WCDFA ninety-nine, seven, two, double seventy-five. Thirty inches from butt to nozzle. Eight lands and grooves. Single load using 14.55 mm custom-made bullets. A beauty… and one of the deadliest anti-tank sniper rifles there is." He cocked an eyebrow at Natasha. "Not to insinuate anything but isn't this a little bit, oh I don't know, overkill maybe?"

With a nudge of her elbow, Natasha drew her Widow from Stark's hand, eying him considerably. "I'm going up against an immortal. I figure I need all the fight I can get." She rested the Widow on one hand, and with the other, swept into her locker at the exact point where she placed her bullet collections and withdrew one single box. "And if you're so worried. These are plastic rounds."

She took the Widow and the magazine box with her to the table laid out in the middle of the room and proceeded to prepare her gun for the fight.

"I'm a bit surprised. I thought you were the… physical kinda woman." Natasha eyed Stark's reflection on the plexiglass wall, cocking her gun audibly. "You know. You ain't like old Hawkeye. You don't do your business afar. You like to get close, get personal, before you pull the plunger on them, cause up close, that's where they are most vulnerable… to you. That's the exact reason why you're so good at what you do and Hawkeye isn't. Which is also the reason why Fury sent you to Bruce. He sent a physical kinda agent to get a… physical… kinda co-worker. No, doesn't really fit. On-the-hour consultant, that sounds better." Stark rattled on, unfazed by Natasha's gun. "So… what I'm asking is… why the sudden change? It's not like Hawkeye is so infirm he can't deliver, can he?"

Hawkeye wasn't infirm enough, but he was compromised enough. One encounter with Loki and his magic had deemed him a risk in Fury's eye for another encounter with one Dr. James Evans and his magic. But Natasha wasn't going to rat out on Clint. Not now. Not ever.

"I do have my own flight of fancy sometimes." She said simply, turning around to face Stark. She didn't bother putting on her wounded gazelle façade for him. Stark wasn't one to fall for it anyway. "Cut the crap, Stark. Why are you here?"

"You know, I like you better when you are this way, straightforward, so very you." He paused, his mouth going in between a grin a grimace, as if he couldn't decide which one he should fall to. "Tell me. You didn't really believe all that, did you?"

"Believe what?"

"Don't play coy with me. It doesn't work and you know it."

This time, it was Natasha's turn to smile. She leaned back, crossed her arm under her chest, pushing it up just a bit. A move design to distract and titillate, and in some cases, heighten the hostile tension to Natasha's favor, but this one time she had done it out of habit. As was before, Tony Stark wasn't one to fall for her tricks. "Why me, Stark? Out of all the people in that room, I thought I was the least likely to be trusted by you."

"Well… I trust you about as far as I can throw you, sans suit."

"Which isn't a lot, knowing you and your alcoholic tendency."

"Touche…" Stark gave her a humoring smile. "… but true." He took one step forward, looking her in the eyes. "Out of all the people in that meeting room, I came to you because we speak the same language."

"The same language?" She arched one eyebrow.

"You're a schemer. I'm a schemer. You like to lure men in with your…" He made a gesture at Natasha's body. "… feminine wiles… for various purposes. I like to lure people in with my manly charms… for various purposes. We speak the same language… birds of a flock, let's say. We use about the same percentage of our brain as we do our brawn… well your delicious female brawn and my spectacular male metal suit. And… we both know bullshit when we smell it. You don't tell me you actually believe Fury, back in there… You don't actually think that's a good idea, do you?"

There was a long pause between them where a deafening silence took place. Natasha ended that pause by taking up her Widow, slinging it behind her back in one swift move. "What I think doesn't matter, Mr. Stark. Unlike you I wasn't paid to share my ideas." She said as she walked pass him, heading for the door. "It's what I do that matter."

Stark did not follow her. He knew better. On the take-off pad of the Helicarrier, a helicopter with a single pilot waited for her. Natasha got in, took the digi-receiver from the pilot and slid it in her right ear. Static ran in her ear canals for a few seconds, followed by the usual status report and operation directives.

"Scout team one is in position. Scout team two coming in. Perimeter established. We're moving in the Black Widow. All other teams on standby. I repeat…"

Natasha switched off her channel, shutting the orders mid-bark. Canned orders over loud speaker. Never a good thing to bring into unknown situations. Natasha much preferred her slice of quiet before rolling in the hot zone. She was sitting in the backseat of an AH-100D Apache, right behind the pilot's seat, with a great view over the chopper's wrap-around glass front. The Apache was put in camouflage mode, which was fitting since she didn't think anyone would appreciate a military-grade helicopter appearing over a suburban zone in the heart of New York. She sent one more glance at the back of the pilot's head, then discreetly unlinked her digi-receiver and connected it to her in-suit recorder instead.

It synced with a click and Natasha pondered which part of the meeting records she should listen to.

The Black Agent? The White Agent? No. Those two might be formidable tools given the right occasions, but not this one, not this time. She turned her wrist where there was a row of tiny buttons designed to look like parts of her cat-suit. She made several selections, pushed. Immediately, the record blared into her ear through the receiver.

"The Tesseract does… as do weapons of mass destructions, like the ones you reverse engineered from…" Stark voice crooned in her ears, a record from a mere thirty minutes earlier. Natasha hit the forward button. Immediately Stark's voice melded with a cacophony of background noises and the voices of others, like stuffs going down the drain.

"Tell us Nick…." "Weapons…" "…what do you mean." The whirl of a machine. More noises. Fury's introductory speech on the third slide, termed the Red Agent.

"… alien DNA." "…exactly the same as a normal human genome, with one difference…" "… effectively immortal…"

That last word stuck in Natasha's head. Immortal.

.

.

.

"Immortal."

The room was quiet, except for Tony Stark's question-cum-statement.

"Immortal." Fury repeated, face straight. On a whim, Natasha would have checked the date on her phone, see if it was April the first, but no. SHIELD didn't do April First. Nick Fury didn't do Aril First.

"Immortal as in, like him?" All eyes went to Thor, who was alternating between eyeing Fury and contemplating the 'third slide' with naked interest.

"No." "Us Asgardians aren't truly immortal." Two people spoke at the same time. Jack shot Thor a dirty look and kept on until he relented the field to her with a "My lady…"

"We have studied the Asgardian genome before…"

"You have? How the hell did you get your hands on their…" Stark made an air-quote while Steve Rogers looked on appallingly. "…genetic material."

"… and they are not a lot different than us Earth people. They are not truly immortal." Jack barreled on as if Stark hadn't said a word. "They are a very long-live people, that's true. But by no means do they live forever. They are strong, and resilient against some weapons but they do get hurt, they do get sick." She eyed Thor as she said the next part. "In the Asgardian genome, there is a Death code."

"A Death Code?" Asked Steve.

"A Death Code." Jack stressed. "The human body is a machine, captain, an incredibly complex and sophisticated machine, and like all machines it ran on pre-coded programs. Death is simply one such program, hardcoded into your blood, into your gene. When you grow old, it's because it's in the program. When you get hurt, it's because the program allows it. When you die, it's because there is an end to your program."

"And this James Evans does not have this Death Code?" Thor gestured to the picture of the good doctor on a by-the-side hologram. Natasha eyed him. Immortal, really? He looked like he couldn't be a day over twenty-five, with his big goofy grin (which should have sent him back to the photographer for a more straight-laced mugshot cause that was how the Identification and Immigration offices rolled), his warm green eyes, and his dorky bottle-butt glasses. Hell, she was having a hard time believing this guy was a PhD, never minded an immortal. An alien immortal! But she supposed this was why nobody had picked up on him yet, cause he blended in so well. Once again, she found herself veering towards her initial assessment. It was either that SHIELD had gotten the wrong person this time, or this James Evans was just more competent, more cunning in the art of subterfuge than they were.

Natasha was uncomfortable with both alternatives.

"It's… hard to explain." Jack made a nervous gripping gesture with her hands, wishing for the cool porcelain of her favorite Daffy Duck coffee mug (which had garnered her quite a few teases from her co-workers. Daffy was cool, damn it! And she just happened to like Beijing grilled duck… a lot… and the thought of Daffy as the duck being grilled… ah).

"He does have a Death code, but it is… defunct…"

"Defunct…?"

"That's the best way I can explain it… without going too much into details…." _That you probably won't understand_, Jack added in her head. "As far as we know, he does not have the same… physical imperviousness… of the Asgardians. He's almost like a normal Earth human. He can get hurt. He can get sick… He can grow old… and he can die…"

"But you said…"

"…except he doesn't stay dead." Jack ignored the looks she was getting, instead, she pointed at the holographic image and the breakdown charts of the Red Agent, possibly a sample of Dr. James Evans' blood. "According to his blood chemistry, he's died before, several times, died and came back to life. How? We don't know. For all intents and purposes, he has a Death Code, just like anybody else, but for some reason, his genetic programs do not end with it. It's almost obsolete. What is the end for everyone else, humans, Asgardians, is simply… a temporary phase… for him… like… puberty… umm" Bad choice of words. But then again, Jack didn't exactly put superb presentation skill on her CV.

Once again, the room went silent as its occupants attempted to swallow this new concept of a person who can surpass death, outgrow it even.

"Think of it like this…" After five minutes of complete silence, Fury broke in. "… in this room, right now, stand a demi-god, a man who has the equivalent of a nuclear reactor for a heart, and a physicist who can transform into a green rage beast that spits out bullets from its head. Is it so difficult to accept that there exist an immortal alien in New York?"

Now that was a good way to put it. Jack thought as she watched the disbelief and skepticism bleed from the faces in the room.

"Okay…" Tony Stark moved his hands beneath his chin, watching them. "… say I get the immortal part. But what about the alien part?"

Ah, that was the easier one. Hanging her hand in the air, Jack pulled a hologram forward.

"This…" She introduced. "… is the Matt Ridley. The map of the human genome." Then she pulled the hologram of the Red Agent next to it. "Notice something?"

It took a full minute for Bruce Banner to put two and two together. Jack didn't blame him. The man was a physicist who had to take a crash-course on human DNA (and why screwing with it was generally not a good idea) because of his predicament. He ain't no top-rated geneticist like Jack.

"They are… almost the same."

"Good observation." She said, smiling at him. "Now to save you the time, I'll make it simple. For us geneticist, there is a term called genetic distance. It is basically the genetic difference between all and any organisms. For example, most humans share ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of genetic structure with each other. Which means, the difference between Mr. Stark here…" She pointed at Stark, then at herself. "… and I would be in this part of the Matt Ridley." The point-zero-one percent at the tail of the Matt Ridley went red under her fingers. "Similarly, the genetic distance between a human and … say… a fruit fly is fifty percent, which means that fifty percent of the fruit fly's DNA is the same as a normal human DNA." Half of the Ridley went red in demonstration. "You with me so far?"

The nods she got put another smile on Jack's face. Perhaps she wouldn't grill Daffy for dinner today after all.

"Now this… is the genetic distance between the Red Agent and the Matt Ridley." Again, the holograms went red in places and immediately several gasps, 'aww hell' and 'no way' broke out.

"That's right." Jack smiled triumphantly as the very head of the Matt Ridley lighted up. "Let me assure you right now that I went through the same reactions you do, but we made no mistake. Period. The difference between the Red Agent and the Matt Ridley… is in the genetic Intergalactic zone. Even a bacterium on Earth has this part in common with the Matt Ridley. And seeing as even the Asgardian shared this same zone with us humans despite their living in a different physical plane altogether, we believe the Red Agent came from another dimension, a different universe from ours…"

.

.

.

Dr. Grey's voice trembled in Natasha's ears, ricocheting all over in her brain in the process of analyzing and assimilating.

_How does one take down an immortal? Simple. One doesn't. Not with an M-98 anti-material Black Widow. Not with anything. _

What Natasha had to do was incapacitate him, rendered him immobile, maybe unconscious but she doubt she could do that to a being with super poison and super healing water for blood, but definitely not dead.

Anything but dead, 'cause death bounced off this guy like gold diggers off a hobo.

Speed, Natasha decided, and the element of surprise were the deciding factors here.

With that decided, she hit the forward button again, looking for the next problem on the roster to regurgitate and fully absorb.

"…suspicious circumstances…" "…cannot be logically explained…" "…not a crack in his biography… James Peverell Evans… went up some dozens generations…" "…old money… no survivor…" "…only one explanation… magic…"

…magic…

.

.

.

"Alright!" Tony Stark declared, throwing his hands high and scratching his scrubby chin, his five o'clock shadow already creeping onto his cheeks. "That beats me. Just how in the hell did you come to this conclusion? Is there like… what… a magical gene or something that says the guy's as sorcerer-y as they come? Like some kind of gene nobody care to tell me about on the morning news? Cause believe me, something like this…" He made a motion with his fingers that made Jack want to come and confiscate his fingers from the palm of his hands with a knife… a blunt knife. "… isn't going anywhere but the biggest splash on the first page of the New York Times and every other respectable and non-respectable media outlet this side of the planet."

Next to him, Steve Roger sat with a look on his face that said he'd had double the quota of surprise he can take in a day, and him being the man out of time that he was, that quota was a lot. On the table in front of him was an Evian bottle with maybe two gulps of mineral water left. Next to that bottle was another, and next to that one was another, and another, and another, until it got to a point where a half a carton box worth of Evian lay at the Big Captain's feet. Apparently, that was how the man coped, by drinking until he busted at the seams. Or it could be his jacked-up physiology, Jack thought. At least it wasn't beer cause Jack wasn't going to volunteer for clean-up duty once Steve hit his threshold and the stuff started coming back up.

Next to him, Bruce Banner chimed in his two-cents. "That definitely beats megalomaniac man in leather."

Jack piped in. "There's no such gene. At least, not to my knowledge. Not until now." Then stopped there. This wasn't really her tuff any more. DNA and gene sequencing were her game. This abracadabra thing? Hell no. Jack had a scientist's pride, despite what others may think.

"To put it simple, we got lucky." Nick Fury took it from there. He gestured at Dr. Evans's slide with a hand. "We checked his biography, history, records, everything. We didn't find a crack. A UK immigrant, he's from an old-money family. Went back all the way to Camelot kind of old, knocking elbows with British peerages kind of old , except tamer, more low-profile. No one alive but him. His museum was built by his great grandfather. He's got a short rap list, a few minor charges for parking his car on the wrong side and for parking it a minute or two too long. But that doesn't mean anything. Any forger worth his salt would know to avoid a scrub-clean record."

"We know that he somehow injected the mixture of the Black, White, and Red agent into Dr. Banner…" Nick continued after a brief pause. "… which has a high chance of being his own blood…"

"….which is a good thing. Cause if it's somebody else's blood then we don't even want to know what this guy's got up his sleeve, aint I right or aint I right?" Stark cut in midway.

"… now I've got one question for you." Fury continued, unfazed by Stark. "… just how do you think Dr. Evans injected the mixture into the Hulk?"

Silence, complete and total silence in the conference room, answered Fury's question. All eyes in the room went to a squirming Bruce Banner, thoughts going haywire in several heads.

"For your information…" Fury brought up another hologram, this one depicting the scene of a daytime commercial zone with two bomb craters in the street, a collection of broken lamp posts and billboards, and some dozens ruined buildings for background. "This testified for Dr. Banner's state of health and … Hulkness … when he encountered James Evans."

The eyes went from Bruce Banner to the James Evans hologram. There were two pictures displayed there: a mug-shot and a full-body of James Evans walking on a pedestrian lane among the crowd, a cup of Starbuck in his right hand, a book in his left, and a hotdog in his mouth, bits of sauce dripping down his chin and on the verge of making a mess on his Oxford plait shirt.

He looked the picture of a nerd, Natasha thought, maybe a particularly attractive one but still a nerd. As if the inch-thick bottle-butt glasses weren't enough of a clue. If she went out on a limb, she could say he was the lean-and-mean type, except she couldn't find any mean on his face. There was a lot of dork though, so maybe lean-and-dork?

And what a question. Just _**how**_ did a nerdish doctor of Anthropology with no records of martial service or training of any kind manage to go up against a half-a-ton green rage monster? No. Not just went against him. Subdued him long enough to inject a tranquilizer then transported him to an apartment several miles away… in broad day light… with no eye witness…

"That's right." Fury restarted after another minute of silence. "We don't know either. And that's another unsolved mystery from James Evans. Here's another mystery, how many eye witness to you think there was?"

"None." Fury answered himself, not expecting a reply from his more-or-less struck-dumb audience. "Survey showed that there were at least five thousand people on traffic at the zone at that particular time of the day. At the point of Hulk entry, that number didn't change. If anything, it went up since traffic was blocked and quite a lot of those people thought getting into those buildings…" He gestured at the destroyed skyscrapers in the picture. "…was a good idea. Out of these five thousand people, not a one recalled what happened at that exact time when a green giant crash-landed. In fact, not a one of them even remembered the giant at all, despite the fact that everything around them was trashed to kingdom's come."

"Memory interference." Natasha volunteered. "An electro-magnet wave of some kind? A sort of electric mind-wipe?"

"On that scale?" Fury countered. "Five thousand people… possibly more. And with such precision? If such technology exists in the hand of any one here on Earth, then SHIELD shouldn't exist in the first place. I brought these numbers to our Psy-op department. Even they scratched their heads. As far as they were concerned, research on something similar has been on the way for a few years now, with a few functional prototypes, but nothing even remotely approaching the power and sophistication of what went on back there. Now, this is where we got lucky."

Fury took a step forward, eyeing his audience.

"We found two witnesses." He said after some deliberation, as if he wanted to say more but opted for the shorter, more condensed version instead.

In reply, Steve Roger downed his last bit of Evian mineral water and, as though he was too exhausted to care about meeting table etiquette at that point, chucked the empty bottle into the heap gathering beside him. No one batted an eyelash. A lot of shock threshold had been passed that day.

"Ryana Wolfe and Matthias Gevase." No new hologram appeared, which was a good thing to Natasha. The room was already chockfull of blinking holograms anyway. She didn't need two more to get the point that SHIELD did its homework properly. "Ryana Wolfe has hearing problems, and so had a hearing-aid microchip implanted in her skull. Similarly, Matthias Gevase is a terminal heart patient under constant monitoring by his personal physician. He has a surveillance chip in his chest. When we found them, both of these chips were… more or less… destroyed. Both were fine, in no harm, but the chips inside them were… burned out… completely fried… broken to pieces. The tissues around them suffered no damage."

"And how exactly does this lead to magic?" Tony Stark pushed, impatient.

"It doesn't… not exactly, not directly." Said Fury, perfectly calm. "We confiscated the chips, and upon further study, found the reason of their demise. We call it the Anti-gamma ray. Whatever… technique… James Evans used to wipe out the memory of five thousand people, this was the only records left of it."

In that instant, all holograms in the room winked shut, making place for a single image of the electronic readout of an electro-magnet wave. Tony Stark leaned forward in his seat, as did Bruce Banner.

"I figure I don't need to bring any expert in on this. We already have two in the room. But for the benefits of those who aren't familiar with the Gamma ray. Let just say that it is the building block of all higher technology on Earth so far, as is on Asgard and other realms if I'm not mistaken. The Tesseract itself constantly radiated a trace amount of Gamma ray. It is also left behind by attacks of the… magical kind… as we have seen from the Asgardian Destroyer… and Loki."

All of a sudden, Tony Stark let out a barking laugh. "Son of a bitch!" He growled as he pulled a copy of the readout from the air and started tinkering, pulling more and more numbers, charts, and statistics out of it as he went. Bruce Banner hesitated for a minute behind him before giving in and pulled his own copy, fingers working furiously on the holo-interface.

The room lapsed into another period of silence as they watched and waited for the residence experts on Gamma ray to give their verdicts.

"I see. Unbelievable!" It was Stark who finished first, with Bruce a close second. But Bruce, being the deliberate pushover he was, easily relinquished to Stark. "Better than atomic bombs, huh. As surprised as I was, I agree. This thing beats the boy and the man any day." Bruce didn't rebut.

"Speak English." Steve Roger muttered, opening another Evian bottle.

Stark rolled his eyes, but obliged anyway. "It's exactly what it says on the tin. It's an Anti-Gamma ray… in every sense of the word. I would not necessarily call it magic…" He made an air-quote. "… but there's no denying its power if someone succeeds in harvesting it."

"Why not?" Bruce rebutted. "I thought it appear quite magic-like. It defies logical rules yet adheres to basic physical frameworks in puzzling fashion. It's like magic… Merlin and Adacadabra type magic… almost impossible to make sense of. The Gamma-ray is the basis for Asgardian science and magic, both of which are closely related if not almost one and the same. This Anti-Gamma ray, it goes against almost every scientific convention. It is something free of science, against science, which I reckon is why the micro chips went up in smoke, since our science and technology is similar if on a lesser scale to Asgardian tech. Magic is a very apt way of calling it, and so is Anti-Gamma ray."

Natasha eyed the readout, coming to her own conclusion. She was starting see why Fury and Stark both rated it as more dangerous than atomic tech. For all its obvious power, nuclear bombs were… messy, uncontrolled, a blade with too many edges for safe usage. If the America ever dropped an a-bomb on …say… North Korea, or Myanmar, or any other terrorist states, they would have to worry about the human cost, the ecological repercussion, and the inevitable atomic fallout that would unquestionably follow.

Albert Einstein was too right. If World War Three were to happen, they would fight World War Four with sticks and stones.

This thing though, this 'Anti-Gamma ray' is something else. The same destructive power… but controlled, précised, and best on all, most effective on technology. With how dependant on their machines and technology the world was becoming, an Anti-Gamma Ray bomb would effectively mercy-kill any country it was dropped on. Natasha could just imagine it. Whole military grid, whole power and information network, cleanly wiped out. With no human cost, and no possible repercussion from the victim state.

Perfect. Just perfect for this new breed of war of the twenty-first century, one that was not fought on blood and land but on digitalized numbers, on virtual and technological prowess.

Across from Natasha, Bruce turned to a saucer-eyed Captain America. "It's like Math Steve. The Gamma ray is one. The Anti-Gamma ray is minus one. They are very similar, but at the same time opposite of each other."

"And when they come together…" Fury added in.

"Poof…" Stark made a demonstrative hand gesture. "… go both. So now we have this guy with either the power or access to the power that can negate the Tesseract and Loki's brand of magic living in the heart of New York. And Loki's going attack New York any moment now. What do you think he's going to do when he find his home invaded? Better yet, what do you think Loki would do once he finds out James Evans's existence?"

"I see…" Steve said finally, taking some effort to digest the huge amount of information way past his comfort time. "… And this is why you want us to retrieve this James Evans? Before Loki finds out about him. You want the Avengers specifically because we can't deal with any possible leak." It was unnecessary to state the fact that some of Loki's sleeper agents could still be strolling the halls the Helicarrier as they spoke, not to mention that they still hadn't been able to scrub out all the viruses and digi-junk Hawkeye had so lovingly delivered to their internal system. As loathed as she was, Natasha had to admit that the people currently in the room were the only ones with the least chances of being compromised.

"I don't think that's it, big guy." Stark drawled lazily, spearing Fury with a look. "That's way too simple for our man here." He stood up, walked around his table so he was standing face-to-face with Nick Fury. "You don't actually worry about leaks, do ya? You leaked it yourself. You want Loki to know of James Evans. Because for all the fruitcakes and rabid cats he has for a brain, he is not reckless enough to go with his plan and open a portal with the Tesseract when there exists someone like James Evans."

"Stark." Said Steve, but even he didn't sound that confident, not with the way he was eyeing the director of SHIELD.

"This is the reason we haven't heard anything from Loki. From the way he's been spinning us, he should be hitting Stark tower right now and we should all be swimming in that whatchamacallit army."

"The Chitauri" Thor offered helpfully.

"Yeah, the whatever guys." Stark took it. "And knowing Loki, he's gonna come for a look. And that's what you want. Not only to retrieve James Evans, but also to lure out Loki and derail his plan. Aint I right or aint I right?"

There was short pause when Nick Fury considered Stark's pointed look and the waiting faces behind him. "You are not… incorrect." He said finally. "We're playing speed chess with New York as the board. Some creative strategy helps a long way."

"Creative strategy." Tony Stark echoed in between a laugh. "Is that what's it called these days? Speed chess? What are we then? The White Side? Your pawns? Then I suppose Loki is the Black King and James Evans the Black Queen? And you are using the Queen to lure out the King isn't it? Just to be straight between us, I'm not going to be your White Queen, no matter how awesome I am."

Fury merely shrugged. "The truth of the matter is, for all that their powers oppose each other, there are more similarities between James Evans and Loki, too many. Both sorcerers, both aliens, both have certain degree of physical superiority over normal humans. We know nothing about James Evans that suggests he cares whether or not the Earth is invaded by Loki's army. If our theory rings true, then Loki's magic is as dangerous to him as his is to Loki. He is an alien. This is not his home, not this planet, not even this universe. He has no reason to stick out his neck for one itty bitty city. For all we know, he might just pull another jump to a different universe… as he did before when he first came here. And Loki… Loki isn't going to push for a fight on two fronts if he thinks he can avoid it. He's arrogant, not stupid. There is as much chance for them to shake hands and form an alliance as there is for them to shoot each other with lightning bolts. If they decide to be enemies, then we profit. But if it's the other scenario…"

He left it there and let the people in attendance draw their own conclusion of what an alliance between two supernaturally powerful alien entities would mean for the people of Earth.

"Then they should not meet at all." Thor boomed, standing up and knocking his chair over. "You should not have let my brother know of this James Evans. Why did you do it?"

"You brother would know one way or another. He is neither stupid nor incompetent. It is only a matter of time. This way, at least I can control what he knows first and what he knows later… or not at all if we are lucky." Fury parried. "A meeting between Loki and James Evans is inevitable, them being what they are. What we can do, however, is control the terms of their meeting. And that's exactly what I did. Loki must also be scrambling his force as we are now."

He looked each person in the room in the eye, his next words delivered with a force and weight of bullets escaping a gun nozzle. "We _**must**_ retrieve James Evans at all cost. He is simply too dangerous a being to let loose, not now, not with our current situation. Whatever happens, we cannot let a truce between Loki and him to occur. For the sake of all the people of this planet, Loki and James Evans must… be… _enemies_."

* * *

**End Chapter 3**

* * *

Initially I intend for this chapter to go further, up until the point where Black Widow meets Harry, but it becomes kinda too long already… so, snip snip it is.

**Next chapter**: In Which Black Widow Meets a Kiss-the-cook Wizard. (The pink apron makes a come-back… and maybe Loki… and maybe Donna… but maybe not Donna… maybe next next chapter)

Now, Ima go and write the next chapter of my current other fic Book Air. In case you don't know, my writing schedule right now is divided between Mirror Mirror and Book Air (with some of Cognates of Heaven jumping in once in a while). Chapters will be updated one after the other. Only once I finish the new Book Air chapter will I start working on the new chapter of Mirror Mirror.

Have fun waiting (trololololololol)

P.S: I ship JackxDonna by the way. I hope that answered your question of what the main pairing of this fic is (Come on guys, just look at the main character fields, won't ya?)


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: The Avengers universe and all its characters belong to Marvel. Likewise with Harry Potter.

**Chapter 4**: In Which Natasha meets a Kiss-the-Cook Wizard

* * *

They came in the night.

For that, Harry was thankful. Ten minutes after Donna left, he got to work, opening up files and protocols long unused and unearthing security measures he didn't exactly want to see again. Still, him being what he was, this was inevitable. Every few years, this happened, like a Ferris wheel that started, rose, dipped, then ended exactly where it began. Harry knew the tune, the whirl, the grunt of machineries running in the wheel's engine. He knew it well. This compulsory goose-chase with certain organizations who either felt him a threat or a prize to be captured, put in a cage, and studied at length, or any combinations thereof. So while he worked a brisk pace, he was in no true hurry. The wheel turned a new round, and he walked just two steps ahead of it. One so that the wheel didn't catch up to him in full, and one more for precaution.

It was a slow day in the museum and all around slow season for Harry. He hadn't appeared in any guest talk in the local universities for some times and hadn't any scheduled for the next month or so. He had no meetings booked, except for the bogus one which he had sent Donna to. Not a mark on his calendar to worry about, so he walked around his museum leisurely, closing down exhibitions and turning up the individual wards one by one, whistling as he went.

Hogwarts, as he had come to call it since its second birthday because he was allowed to be nostalgic at his age, was neither large nor small. Yet in her bosom lay magical artifacts in the thousands. Some he had taken on the last leg of his journey here. Some he had created himself, out of a one-of-a-kind necessity, on this new land he had come to call home. He passed by Gryffindor tower, then Ravenclaw enclave. Hufflepuff nursery lay in the back, out in the open, and full of magical faunas that weren't supposed to exist here, and he had to veil it with a ward twice the strength of the others. Slytherin dungeon was fifty feet below the basement, but Slytherin dungeon was for super secret things and always warded unless he needed to open it for crisis situations, so he didn't go anywhere near it.

Harry liked to think he needn't bring out the big guns to deal with people who had the courtesy to come to him in the night and not in the morning. Less panic that way. Less people hurt.

Further in was the International Library of Magical Kinds, though they didn't know it by that name here. Here they called it the Occult Archives, which, while not entirely incorrect, sounded demeaning and trivializing to Harry. But he was the one living in a glass museum, so he best not threw any fireballs.

The Ministry of Magic lay in a sequestered niche of its own, full of half-done projects, ancient treatises, and other such things that had taken him almost forty years to sort through. They used to have experimentary weapons here, but he had long since moved the working ones down to Slytherin so the one that stayed were more gigantic dust collectors than real honest-to-Merlin magical weapons.

Still further in, appearing upstairs to some Muggle and downstairs to others but was actually a round-way and branching off in different directions, up, down, East, West, and sideways all, were The Burrow, then Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, then Godric's Hollow ruin, which he had renovated in his second decade here. The room next to last was where Harry stored the Invisibility Cloak, the Goblet of Fire, his Pensieve Collection, Nicholas Flamel's stones and other assorted artifacts. A row of cabinets on the right housed a collection of time turners large and small. The row on the left kept the potions in perpetual zero C-degree and ready for use.

He picked up his Invisibility Cloak as he passed it, and it came fluttering into his pocket like a live thing made of liquid cloth, happy to be in close proximity to its brothers the Ring, which he wore on his ring finger, and the Wand, which stayed with him always.

The last room was the one where Harry least frequented out of them all. It was the highest room in the entire museum. It was also the deepest underground, far deeper than where Harry had built Slytherin dungeon, and the furthest in, further than even the Ministry of Magic. Magic in this room threaded and weaved and coiled in layers, like spider silk after a century of building and rebuilding by an army of Aragog's children. Threads of magic, strands of magic, blankets so thick he was sure there was not an inch of the room that wasn't covered with magic. Some of the magic were Harry's. Some weren't.

He opened the door with his finger, inserting them inside the lock and letting its steel teeth prick his skin and draw blood and drink it, and watching the meteorite-made contraption on the door turn and whirl and give and the door opened.

The Mirror of Erised stood in the centre, quiet and solemn.

He had covered its face with thick drapes after his journey here. Harry stared at the mirror. It stayed silent. He stood there for maybe ten minutes before deciding not to go in and pull off the drapes and take a look. Instead, he closed down the room and turned up its ward to maximum with his Elder Wand and left without saying a word, without moving a foot into the room.

It left a bad taste in his mouth every time he was here. But he had to make sure nonetheless. Every single time he was 'discovered' by the unmagical, he had to come and take a look. Sometimes, when the silence got too loud and the years so heavy he could hear his bones crack under their combined weight, Harry came here. But he never pulled the drapes and took a look.

Never.

After the first century of his first life, looking into the mirror became a painful thing to do.

When he retraced his steps and walked back out, Harry closed down the rooms after him in subsequent orders, the room second to last, then Godric's Hollow (he could hear his parents laughing as he walked by under their second-floor windowsill), Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, The Burrow, The Ministry of Magic, all of them.

When he got back upstairs (or downstairs, or to the front, or to the back, to the left side, or to the right side. Magical architecture became a confusing thing to navigate for Muggles as they aged. For Harry, it was simply a matter of getting from point A to point B), it was six thirty and the dying sun was drawing a fiery stretch of red, orange, and purple over the skies and on the street in front of Hogwarts museum glass door. Harry walked to the front (and only front. He kept this part relatively simple and magic-free for his Muggle assistant and customers), closed the door and flipped the 'Closed' sign facing outward. Then he made a call to the shift-working cleaners, janitors, and the security company he signed up under and told them he was closing early today for a business trip tomorrow and that they had a paid week free until further notice from him.

Then he went back to his office, turned up all the mirrors, and sat down before his laptop and watched. And waited for their first move.

* * *

Natasha was uneasy.

The window in front of her looked at a perfect forty-five degree down the front of the Museum of Exotic Arts and Hogwarts Archives. Glass door and brick walls in her vision. And windows opening right into the office of one James P. Evans… who was eating a late dinner of extra-size Burger King takeouts while watching YouTube videos of randomly dancing Korean singing 'Gangnam style' at the top of his lung (God, was that open Gangnam style or open condom style? Natasha really had to brush up on her Korean if she couldn't decide which of the two it was).

She edged her Widow Maker on its stand, peering at Evans's face through the crosshair. He looked even younger in person than on photos. That might have something to do with the Triple Whopper deluxe combo he was chewing on, all three quarter-pound layers of beef patties, assorted vegetables and crusty sandwich, two extra-large disposable cups of Coke, two helpings of french-fries, a box of deep-fried onion rings and several packs of chicken nuggets. White sauce dribbled down his chin, which he wiped clean with two fingers, sucking on them afterwards and wiping them again on his after-office-hour jeans.

Any moment now, Natasha expected to see a pimple come blistering from his face, red and shiny and angry and popping out from the most embarrassing of places, the type that made people look away and would leave acne scars in the future. He looked that young!

"Damn…" Stark's voice came into Natasha's ears through her earpiece, trampling all over the central channel. "… watching him eat reminded me that I hadn't eaten yet. No dinner. Nothing. Nuh-uh. And whose fault was that?"

"… I thought this channel was secure?" Nick Fury's voice came in the Stark's wake.

"What? You thought that flimsy excuse of a firewall you used to protect your com channel could stand up against the super special extra awesome awesomeness that is Tony Stark?"

"… we just updated the protocol… this morning."

"Well yeah, that gave me some problems. But news flash Nick, your special move copy protection sucks. I pirated your software from the last time you hacked Jarvis. That was mean, by the way. And what do you know, it fucking worked! Must be because both are developed by the same cyber-warfare department, eh?" Stark replied, cackling gleefully over Natasha's earpiece.

Awkward silence ensued.

"… situation report, please." Nick Fury requested after one full minute of silence, voice calm and even. Natasha knew what was going on in Nick's head, something along the line of 'If I ignore him long enough, he'll disappear. With his attention deficit disorder, he'll lose interest. He'll leave me alone. He'll leave us all alone.'

Well, unfortunately for Fury, Natasha didn't think that was gonna happen. Stark wasn't going to bite, not with that obvious a bait anyway. He was going to poke Fury, in the proverbial spot between the eyes. Natasha just knew it.

"Anybody hankering for some pizza?" Stark butted in before anyone on the official channel so much as opened their mouth to reply to Nick's query.

Natasha resisted the urge to slap her forehead with her trigger hand and derail her Widow Maker from its perfect bullet line. She hated being right sometimes.

"How about it guys? Pizza after this? There's gotta be plenty of rolling stomachs around here, cause I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only guy that got dragged off before my date with a dinner plate by our esteemed director. So how about it? Pizza Hut, tonight, my treat, right after this… whatever it is."

"The son of Stark is right." The voice of a certain demigod boomed into Natasha's ears with some customary reluctance. "I do feel a bit peckish."

"We have a mission, Thor." The voice of one Captain America followed closely, almost kicking Thor's rumbling baritone off the channel and managing to sound admonishing even to a semi-immortal demigod. "And Stark is not the son of… well, he's not the son of… anyone."

"Touché, big guy. I ain't a son of anyone eh?"

"Wait… is there anybody here that does NOT have access to the main com channel?" That was Bruce Banner, mishap clear in the voice that was quivering through Natasha's earphones.

"Nope! I invited everyone to the party. Didn't want nobody to feel left out."

"I thought the purpose of the main com channel was to prevent traffic blockade and to always have a secure line? Why is everyone here then? And don't you all already have your own channel codes? Isn't this, oh I don't know, a bit self-defeating?"

And on it went, with people Stark had 'invited' trickling in one by one.

"Agent Romanoff" Natasha's other earpiece buzzed on a private channel, straight from director Fury to her. "I'm trusting you to do something about this."

_Way ahead of ya, tough guy_. Natasha thought as she butted her Widow Maker to a downturn, barking with clear authority into her mouth piece and cutting Stark off mid-sentence.

"Target moving. Six o'clock."

A hush fell over the main com channel, followed closely by a rush of situational reports as SHIELD training kicked in and Stark and his shenanigans left behind in the flurry.

"That was mean." Her private channel buzzed again, this time filled with Stark's voice.

"If you are so against Fury's plan…" Natasha drawled, all professional. "… then you should find other ways to protest." Then she pushed a button on her cat-suit and blocked him out. Sometimes, it really took a scheming magnificent bastard to shut up another scheming magnificent bastard. In Stark's case, sometimes was code-speak for 'all the times' and the first 'scheming magnificent bastard' for 'agent Romanoff'. Nick tried, but he just didn't have that feminine wiles touch that Natasha used so well.

Down below in the museum, her target moved from his table to the mini fridge, then backward, closing the fridge door with a kick, another can of Coke in his hand. The clock on the wall of his office struck nine-thirty PM. Hewitt-Cooper Street was empty, as most streets with an inhabitant group consisting of museums, art galleries, business offices and vocational colleges tended to be at this hour of the day. Most had closed shop since nine, some because their working hours ended way before that, some was 'persuaded' by SHIELD (discreetly of course, and after layers and layers of middlemen). Aside from the museum, only a single-manned round-the-clock convenience store still shed light on Hewitt-Cooper Street. The empty business office Natasha was sitting in, half-height glass windows, bare concrete walls, and a 'for rent' sign and all, offered her a hundred percent visible vantage point. Sitting in near total darkness, the crosshair of her Widow Maker trailed James Evans as he moved about his office.

"He closes at ten. Initiate plan A." Nick's voice flooded the main com channel, over-riding all other signals.

"Plan A initiated." Went the answer from a designated SHIELD watcher agent. Immediately, two figures appeared under the street light of Hewitt-Cooper. A man and a woman in non-descript black suits, walking in unison.

"I thought these guys were supposed to look non-threatening." Stark voice fizzled on the main com channel.

"They aren't carrying any weapons." Steve Rogers answered.

"They don't need no weapons. Just look at them. They look like tax agents from the IRS or funeral house employees! Now tell me you are not scared of that?"

"Well I…"

"Steve…" Natasha butted in before it could snowball from there. "… please don't feed the troll."

"Oh… oh right…" Steve Rogers went silent, just in time, the two agents were right in front of the Museum door. One of them gestured to the sign on the door. 'Closed' it said, but the museum door wasn't yet roped down from inside and a certain museum curator hadn't yet exited. One of the agents made for his cell phone.

Natasha pulled the crosshair from the pair of agents, trusting them to execute plan A flawlessly.

Plan A, also known as Soft Persuasion (kid-gloves in Nick-speak). Talk to him, Nick had said. Softly. Gently. Non-threatening. Be reasonable. Use words that enticed, that lulled. Appear normal. Conceal all weapons. If plan A failed, there was plan B. Hard persuasion, which included Natasha, her Widow Maker and a good plastic bullet in a place that would knock someone out but would not kill (there was also plan C but Natasha preferred not to have to wring that out from SHIELD's blueprint drawer. Too messy, that plan. And it probably wouldn't work, not for immortals any way). But for a target of James Evans's importance (… and suspected skill, Natasha had to admit. Anyone with this kind of power that managed to stay under SHIELD's radar this long had to have skill), SHIELD would really prefer not having to enact plan B and other subsequent plans. It was, therefore, imperative that these agents made the best first impression possible on the good doctor.

And talking about first impression, Natasha herself was having a hard time formulating one concerning this one particular doctor of Anthropology. She moved in the darkness, tense, unease, hoping against hope that the usual 'first go is a no-go' prediction wouldn't hold true this time.

Down below and completely oblivious (or at least appearing to be oblivious) to her blight, James Evans put on a hideous pink apron. Natasha's crosshair almost did a double take upon spotting it. 'Kiss the Cook' said the monstrous apron.

"Oh… that is… some very unfortunate sense of fashion." Tony Stark commented on the main com channel. This time, Natasha didn't put a stop to him.

The doctor's cell phone was on his table, right next to his Alienware laptop, and a split second after he put on the pink apron, it rang, vibrating against laminated wood to the tune of 90s Bugs Bunny opening music. On the other end of the museum, an agent was holding his own untraceable and untappable phone expectantly. Natasha watched as James Evan threw the quivering phone a cursory glance, picked it up, flapped it open then snapped it close in one single motion, effectively ending the call before the agent could so much as open his mouth. Natasha's disquiet went up another notch.

"Call again." Nick. On the main channel.

This was all so ridiculous, thought Natasha upon hearing Nick's order. These were specifically trained agents, not trainees from Washington that needed to be supervised and led every step of the way. And Nick god-damn Fury! On the com channel! Directing field operation with orders like 'Call again'!

This whole operation was testament to how on edge SHIELD was about James P. Evans, nervous enough to have their highest agent directing on the field, nervous enough to surround a whole street in the middle of New York city with plain-clothes agents and special response and tactical teams, nervous enough to have the whole Avengers Assemble on standby.

All the big guns, pointing at a target that was, for all intents and purposes, a normal civilian. Except James Evans really wasn't a run-of-the-mill civilian was he? His blood had tested out as alien blood, hadn't it? And he was suspected to possess abilities similar to magic, wasn't he? All these questions and not one answer. An operation executed on blind intel. Their supposedly biggest target thus far, possibly even bigger than Loki, and they knew next to absolutely nothing about him, nothing concrete anyway. If anyone called Natasha out on her nervousness, she could give them all these reasons and tell them to go suck on it.

The agent made another call. Natasha's trigger finger quivered on her gun. Nervous tension threaded through her as the James Evans in the circle of her crosshair quirked a brow at the once-again vibrating phone. Instead of picking up his call, he ignored it, going instead to open the drawer of his work table, withdrawing from it a...

"… is that a frying pan?" Stark asked the question for her. "What is a frying pan doing in there? And what's he doing with it?"

Questions whose answer she would also like to know. Natasha trailed after Evans as he moved across the room, heading for the door of an attached washroom, ignoring his ringing phone entirely. There was something about his gait that was making a mess out of Natasha's nerves. Something about it that pulled at her brain, like certain details she should recognize but couldn't. A certain kind of physical confidence that didn't quite belong on a supposedly lifelong intellectual, the quietness of his step, the economy of movements, tiny gestures full of purposes. His body language screamed loud and clear that this was a man who knew exactly what was going on around him and exactly what he wanted to do with it.

It hit her as the door closed behind him. James Evans did not walk like a doctor of Anthropology (or any other titles the Ivy Leagues of Oxford bestowed on his kind). James Evans moved like a soldier.

"Back door unit?" Nick crackled in her ears as Natasha was suddenly consumed with an intense curiosity. Birds of the same feathers knew each other. Natasha had never met another of her breed without recognizing them for what they truly were, and now more than ever, she wanted a close-up view of James Evans, to look into his face and really know for sure what he was. Not like Bruce Banner or Tony Stark or Thor, not even like Steve and his boy scout soldier honor. No. Like her, like Hawkeye. Wet-worker. The breed of soldier who also doubled as cold-blooded killer who slunk in the dark. If (a humongous if with a sky-scrapping percentage of being true) James Evans was of her type, then that would explain why, for the last thirty minutes, Natasha felt like she was the one being watched, the one viewed under the scope of a sniper riffle, and not the other way around.

"Negative." Went the answer from the backdoor team. "Target's not visi…"

A tiny disturbance in the air was the only trigger for Natasha, an iron stake under a sky riddled with lightning. She was already in hyper-sensitive mode from her nervousness and her gut accepted the fact that there was someone else in the room beside her without preambles. Someone that was not there the second before that.

Acting on instinct, she tore her M-98 Widow Maker from its tripod stand, whipping it like a baton as she spun a one-eighty. She caught a flash of the pink 'Kiss-the-Cook' apron as a hand closed around her Widow Maker's throat. The frying pan descended from above, heading not for her but for the back of her M-98. Natasha pulled the trigger. Her gun quaked with the force of a 14.55 mm anti-material, anti-tank bullet exiting its metal throat under the pressure of controlled mini-explosions. Natasha didn't know which happened first. The bullet exiting the gun nozzle or the frying pan making contact with its metal back and (surprises upon surprises) cutting her beloved M-98 in half like it was hot butter on an ill-conceived date with the famed Honjo Masamune.

There was a whispery crack in the air, the sound a gun under a silencer made. The single red cut on James Evans's cheek was the only evidence that her bullet grazed him. The wall behind him was punched in a good two inches.

"Feisty." He said. And in a gone-horribly-right wish-fulfillment scenario, Natasha found herself face-to-face with a coldly smiling James Evans, who was at once shorter and taller, and smaller and larger than she'd thought, and the icy thread underneath the green of his eyes was all too familiar.

Natasha dropped the remains of her M-98, rearing backward. It left her hands burnt and smoking. She slipped easily into cool professionalism, one thought running in her head, suppressing the pain in her burnt hands and all other superfluous trains of thoughts.

_Alert the others._

"Nick…" That was as far as she got. The moment the name formed in her mouth, Evans closed in, ridiculous frying pan at the ready. The rest of the sentence evaporated from Natasha's mouth along with her breath. She reared back again, hitting the wall. Belatedly, she realized she was in a bad place. Her previously perfect sniping spot was now a death corner. Out of the hundreds of SHIELD agents crowding Hewitt-Cooper Street, James Evans had chosen her for this exact reason.

Natasha dropped her hand down her leg, foregoing her handgun – too unwieldy for close-range combat – and heading straight for the Tungsten-Cabide dagger strapped to her thigh. She brought it up just in time to parry the butt of the pan off her face. She took another step backward, her back hitting the wall.

_Not good_. She thought as Evans pursued relentlessly with his pan, caught halfway between alarm and incredulousness. She was in a knife fight for her life… against a man who wielded a frying pan. Natasha didn't even have time to think on that thought as the next few minutes the fight broke out in full. She slid down the wall, using it as a stabilizing point as she unleashed a volley of upper-cut slashes, hoping to force an opening with which she can escape. Her opponent parried skillfully, using the butt of his pan to steer the trajectory of her jabs in circle while his other hand cut down on her wrist.

Natasha got the opening she wanted, a lull one second long enough for her to roll out of the corner he had forced her in… at the price of her knife hand which hung limply from its bruising wrist. Her Tungsten knife lay discarded on the floor. Evans didn't give her a chance to pick up her knife as the very next moment he went straight after her, smiling, never stopping to say a word or even to gloat as she had hoped he would.

_Not good!_ Rang in her head for a second time. She was at a severe disadvantage, weaponless and with one injured hand… against an opponent of this caliber.

"Coward!" She stalled. "Drop that and face me like a man!" The best scenario would be for her opponent to heed whatever sense of gentlemanly honor and actually dropped that blasted pan of his and engaged in fisticuffs with her. Natasha was confident she could turn it around in hand-to-hand combat… though she didn't think her opponent would actually buy it. That cold glint in his green eyes said he wasn't the type. Failing that, she hoped to stir up anger at the insult and derail his game plan against her. As all trained professional assassins knew, even the tiniest mental disturbance may change the tide in a fight between two trained combatants of this caliber. In her career, due to her specialties, Natasha had rarely ever had to go up against another of her kind this close before (the only one occasion being the first time she met Clint, in which she had lost quite soundly), and this thought itself was a testament to how desperate she was getting.

"Oh please…" Her opponent smiled indulgingly as he closed in on her, moving in ever tightening circles around her. "Like I would fall for that." Then he went for the plunge. "Let's dance."

_Shit_. Natasha brought up her arms, bracing herself. There were noises coming through her earpieces. She had alerted the others, but not soon enough. Stark's earlier shenanigans had loosened their vigilance, and the agents, thinking this might be a payback mock from Natasha, had reacted precious seconds too late.

If she survived this, thought Natasha, she was going to have a long, hard date with Tony Stark and a room full of metallic implements of the sadistic kind. That was also her last coherent thought as the next few minutes turned out like Blitzkrieg with fists, feet, and a frying pan. The pan opened the second volley, flying at her face, then above her face as she dipped and slipped on her feet, hoping to use Evans's momentum to bring his unprotected right flank to her ready fist. That didn't happen. Left chop, on her shoulder, followed by a textbook haymaker, forcing her backward again. Natasha hooked right, spreading her legs and going for his feet, trying to swipe him off. Evans spun around her, trapped her left hand with a twist of his pan-handle, and together they twirled in a deadly parody of a waltzing couple.

It took only a few more minutes for Natasha to realize she wasn't getting out of this. Not early enough for reinforcement to arrive. Not even nearly. With that realization, her priority changed.

_If clear victory can't be achieved, change your approach_. That had always been Natasha's MO.

She let her defense lapse and with careful timing, put herself in the path of a sucker punch to the stomach. The stars in her vision were expected, as was the fall. She lay on the floor, going in and out of consciousness. The next thing she was aware of was the hands on her ears and chest.

"Sorry for that." Evans commented, looming above her. "But I didn't want to damage this." He pulled her earpieces and their transmitter pod from her. She made to move, but this only served to remove all thoughts of a surprise attack from her as she discovered she couldn't move an inch, her body frozen in stasis on the floor.

Evans looked her in the eye, smiling. "Come now. You really thought I wouldn't think of that?" Not really. Any wet-worker worth his salt should know the sneak attack staples, but Natasha had been forced to a corner and while she wasn't _**that**_ desperate yet, every little bit helped.

There was a tense moment when Evans surveyed her from head to toe, making sure she didn't have any special tricks left up her sleeve. When he was satisfied he wasn't going to get jumped the moment he turned his back, he switched his attention from Natasha to the communication set he'd taken from her. With deft moves of his hands, he clipped the transmitter onto the belt of his jeans, clipped the pieces onto his ears, then with a turn of his fingers, reopened Natasha's channel code and entered the main com channel.

"Hi." He said, effectively ending the buzzing going on in the main channel. "So you're the guys who were stalking me all day today?"

* * *

**End Chapter 4 **

* * *

1. This chapter comes out a bit slow… mainly because I was recuperating after my accidental encounter with Fifty Shades of Gray. I probably am going to get the quacks for saying this, but because of it, fan fiction and the self-publishing circle are going to get the slam from mainstream opinions. Say what you want about Fifty Shades of Gray (you can like it. Everyone's entitled to his/her personal preferences), but the quality of writing there can use a lot of improvement.

2. Why are people still asking me what the pairing of this fic is after last chapter? Obviously it's Harry's-pink-apronxHarry's-frying-pan. Come on! I thought it was pretty clear with the main characters field up there. In case you didn't get my sarcasm, it's LokixHarry. There, I said it! I'm going to slash this fic till kingdom's come. And no, I'm not going to follow the yaoi seme-uke dynamic (that is just eff-ed up). Unlike a lot other writers, characterization comes before romance for me.

3. Next chapter: Loki appears… maybe? And sparks fly, literally, in between bouts of gunfire, lightning and collapsing buildings.

4. Sorry for the possible typos and mistakes. English is not my native language (nor my second language)


	5. Chapter 5

_**Disclaimer:**_ The Avengers universe and all its characters belong to Marvel. Likewise with Harry Potter.

**Chapter 5: Confrontation**

* * *

"...pull it out." He said after what felt like a year shot on sixty-frames-per-second footage. Slow-mo. Like the one they used in Nat Geo, or for kill shots in Animal Planet. Sixty-frames-per-second. Three hundred and sixty five days. That made it around two billion frames, give or take a hundred thousand or so. Two billions jammed tight in the span of time from when James Evan walked in on the main com and said hello to the time Nick Fury had the sense to turn off his long-range clipped-on com bug, turned to his dozen or so on-site assistants and issued an order.

Yeah. It felt that long.

"...sir?" His assistant, Joe So-and-So, said, still dumb from shock.

"I said..." He repeated, his fingers clenched tight around the mouth of his com bug. He'd turned it off so there was no chance his order could be heard from just about anyone not in this room, but the look in the man... alien... man on the other side of the monitor screen matrix's eyes was starting to make him think otherwise. "... pull it out, sonnie. The main com channel. The secondary, tertiary and back-up com tubes. The satellite network link. Pull the plug, offline, unhook everything that is more advanced than your smartphone's Bluetooth connection. Do it, or it will be your ass on the Washington Monument at exactly sun-up tomorrow morning." Preventative protocol. If the com channels were compromised, deny use of it to enemy, or in this case, alien, entity by all means necessary. This particular com grid costed five billions for the design alone and another ten for the one-issue manufacturing. It promised near total impenetrability against all but the very best cyber warfare suites **not** available on the market right now. But against the complete unknown that was James Peverell Evans, Nick didn't feel like testing his chance.

"... yessir!" So-and-So snapped an unnecessary, shaky salute before running off to do his job. Nick snapped back to the man, alien, on the other side of the screen. He was unmoved, standing idly by the prone body of Natasha Romanoff.

"Get the analysers going. We have on-screen monitors. Get me everything there is to know." He barked out orders without removing his eyes from James Evans, hearing more crisp replies of 'Sir yessir!'. In the next second, background programs started running parallel to the video feed on the main screen. On one side, taping softwares burning the streaming vid down to their on-site hardwares. On the other, custom-order facial and body language recognition programs were clocking in double runtime.

Nick's eyes fell to Natasha once. She was stiff, but breathing, her chest moving with minute raise and fall. That was all he needed to know. His eyes went back to the prime target, who was currently playing with Natasha's clipped-on mike.

"I need results!" He urged. SHIELD operations weren't usually this passive, but this one target was something even they were ill-prepared for. He needed statistics, infos, before he could give the go-order.

The reply he got was against his expectation. "Negative, sir. Results are no good. Our software runtimes are blocked." His chief assistant hollered from behind a personal com screen.

He considered this news for one second, tempted to level a deep-throated 'explain' order at the chief assistant, but he had been on enough first-contact missions with individuals possessing extraordinary powers to know that was a lost cause and a waste of time when such was in limited supply. He had walked in on this fully aware of James Evans's unique ability to disrupt technology of any kind. He just didn't know how far it extended to, or how subtle it could be. With the monitors still working and not fried to charred crisps as the imbedded personal microchips on Ryana Wolfe and Matthias Gevase, the two witnesses that confirmed Evans's mind-wiping ability, he'd thought SHIELD hardwares and softwares were in the safe zone. Well, apparently, that assumption made an ass out of him.

On the other side of the screen, the alien in question waited patiently, looking to all the world as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

"Anything else to report?" He asked as he fingered the on-button of his short-range com bug. Out of all their communication means, only the short-range connectors still functioned. Everything else had been powered down. Everything else had been linked to SHIELD central grid, the brain of their operation. Though James Evans's intent was still a complete mystery, Nick wasn't risking someone of James Evans's caliber getting into SHIELD central network.

"Uh... yes. The frying pan is Chinese." The chief assistant volunteered, turning his computer screen around to show the zoomed-in snap of the frying pan in action. There was a tiny inscription on the handle, right around Evans's grip. It said 'Made in China - circa 2012'.

He gave into his impulse, turned and eyeballed the chief assistant. Two seconds of absolute silence crawled by. That was a long time for someone like Nick. "Anything else?" He said finally, but what really went through his head was 'I have a shotgun and am currently under high stress.'

"The... apron is made in Vietnam? and dyed in Cambodian industrial-grade dye?" The assistant offered meekly.

Another two seconds passed by before Nick turned away, that or risked blowing a vein. He switched the short range connector on while briefly considering putting the chief assistant in a torture room with a seventy-hour looping playback of Tangled and no potty after all this had been taken care of. Maybe... maybe. The fall-back com channel came alive with an electronic buzz.

"This is Nick Fury." He said to his com bug, eyes glued to James Evans's face. He detected no sign that the alien might have heard anything. He shouldn't. Nathasha's side of the connection was closed.

Immediately after, a swarm of replies from his agents came in, all confirming their statuses.

"Finally!" Tony Stark crowed above the voices. "And here I thought I was the only one left. Thought he took you all out already with his abracadabra tricks. I was one second away from jumping in."

"Stay where you are, Stark. Your armor suit up against Evans' tech-negating power is a match made in hell."

"Don't have to tell me twice, big guy."

"Agents." He addressed the rest of SHIELD black suits. Immediately, the cacophony stopped. "Keep your position. Cerberus squad to the building A105, right front. Tranquilizer only." Cerberus, the only squad aside from Natasha equipped with long-ranged weaponries. What they had was nothing on her level of course, but enough to do the job. As a rule of thumb, meta-human powers, the kind subtle enough for this kind of delicate sabotage work, required an attentive mind behind the steering wheel. The kind of mind jacked into the body Cerberus was about to pin with darts of high-dosage Benzodiazepine, enough to knock out an elephant or two.

"What are we waiting for?" Thor came booming into Nick's eardrums. "That man is the only chance we have of capturing my brother and taking him back to where he belongs!"

"Stay where you are, Thor." Nick growled into his mike. His fingers twitched nervously. "This is not a target where brute force guarantees the winner. Let SHIELD take care of this, we will call on your..."

He stopped there immediately, his attention drawn to the screen. His target was moving, pacing the room and eyeing the windows. Not good. A moving target was a bad target. Then something else happened. There were eleven cameras and monitoring thermo-bugs placed in that room. James Evans glanced once at one of them as he walked by. A screen in front of Nick winked out. Only a peripheral screen. His main one was still on, but the message was clear.

_**I don't have time for your waiting game. Come out. Now.**_

Nick hesitated once, for a split second, his eyes going over the moving red dots that represented Cerberus squad on the inhouse LPS pinpointing device. They were on the stairs, moving up. Not yet in place. Then he input his master security key and temporarily overturned the lockdown on the main com channel. A connection strung between him and Natasha's personal com bug.

He switched it on. The hum in his ears was noticeably void of the background buzz that usually accompanied a team main channel.

"Good evening, Dr. Evans." He opened. Buy time, he told himself, buy time.

On the screen, James Evans stilled, his eyes going directly for the hidden cam streaming the footage directly to Nick's main screen. Bastard knew exactly where they were. So much for being hidden.

There was a minute of silence when James Evans watched him over the cam, twirling his frying pan lazily in circles, while Nick watched the ascent of Cerberus. About there, but not yet. Rapid response protocols translated to minutes at most on the battlefield, not nearly as fast as he'd hoped. Then finally, Evans said.

"I'm surprised." Another pause. Evans looked at the windows, the open windows, then back at him. Nick twitched nervously. "I didn't think you were open for dialogue."

A line. He caught it immediately, stalling for time. "Then why attempt it, Dr. Evans?"

"I don't know. I guess I was curious. No harm in trying, right?" Evans made a sweeping gesture with his hands, his feet circling the room, never stopping in one place. "This hasn't happened in some times. I took a lot of measure to ensure that it doesn't, but it looks like it didn't faze you at all. And... I didn't know who you were. So... I was curious."

He was curious! He was curious, so he took out one of their top agent and successfully paralyze, however momentarily, their operation. "How's Natasha?" Nick asked, partly as a diversion, partly to put a subtle mental wedge in Evans's head.

James Evans glanced at the still Natasha Romanoff on the floor, then back at Nick. "She's fine. She'll live." He said, non-committal. "You know, that's the kind of question FBI would ask."

"Would they?"

"Yeah. Apparently they take their pop culture image very seriously. If the shoes fit right?" He smiled here. "Though I doubt you're gonna pop a badge in my face anytime soon, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not."

"Not Central Intelligence either."

"No, we aren't."

"Definitely not the service."

"Nope."

Evans went quiet. He looked at the windows again, but he didn't move. He stood still. Did he see something there? The windows went parallel to the building on the opposite side.

"Out of guesses already?" Nick pushed, not wanting to clue Evans on in his plan.

"Yeah." Said James Evans, nonchalantly, as he turned back. "There aren't that many military organizations allowed to move this kind of operation on the United States territory. I can think of a few more, but none of them has the strength to move this many gunhands through the heart of New York... or pull a whole section of Manhattan off the grid on such short notice." He paused, smiled. "But it doesn't matter, does it? The who and the how."

"Then what matters?"

"The what." Said Evans. "The why. Why are you here?" He took a step. "What do you want?" Then another, forward to the hidden cam, locking eyes over a layer of screen and digitized signals. "What do you want hmm, Mr. Fury?"

Nick Fury froze... at the same time a volley of hollow point tranquilizer hypodermic needles broke through the windows. A sharp cracking sound, like the sound of metal bullets butting-heads with bulletproof glass. James Evans looked up. The tranqs, five of them, hovered in the air, caught in the outer layer of an invisible bubble. Nick can see little cracks like firecracker light around the needle waists.

"I was wondering when they were going to come." Evans commented. He was still smiling, and though he was facing away from the main com, SHIELD had installed a bug in that direction too. So Nick was treated to the front view of his smiling face as he studied the floating syringes. "Textbook perfect. When close-range frontal assault is not possible, attack from afar. Take out the brain, the body will follow. I think it works... in theory." He grinned.

Nick can hear the muttered curses and gasps in the room around him, courtesy of his host of assistants and tech specialists.

Then Evans frowned. On the screen, the needles quivered, their metal outer shells heating from an unknown cause, flaring red and green, cracking and popping as they stayed afloat. A flash of recognition zipped through Evans's face. He threw one hand up, just in time to shield himself from the explosion.

"Polonium rounds, doctor Evans." Nick sneered into his mike as he watched the explosion send the content, a highly volatile concentrated mixture of Benzodiazepine, into the air where it quickly transform from liquid to gas. "Designed to explode on non-organic impact. How's that for theory?"

"Shit. Nice one, Nick." Tony Stark came in through his com, along with the murmuring agreements of the one-hundred-and-four SHIELD agents on-site.

But it wasn't over yet. As the smoke cleared, Evans appeared, standing with one hand up, his frying pan swirling madly in his other hand. The first translucent bubble that protected him from the tranquilizer volley was visible now, and inside it, was yet another bubble, this one shining a pale yellow, centering on Evans's outstretched hand. It stood between him and the Benzodiazepine-soaked atmosphere.

"Clever." Commented Evans, to the chorus of more curses of SHIELD agents in Nick's ears. "But unoriginal." He opened his mouth, about to say something else, when something outside of Nick's plan happened.

The outermost wall of the room where James Evans stood blew open in a shower of thunder and debris, throwing him and a limp Natasha to a side. A roaring Thor came from the just opened floor-to-ceiling window on the wall.

"Evans!" He boomed, swinging his hammer. "Son of no one!" In his head, Nick could see Captain America planting his face in the nearest reachable hard surface. "Asgardians really do have parental issues." Tony Stark commented drily as the hammer came down... and collided with the translucent bubble.

Light filled the room, booming and cracking. Thunders snapped. The screens in front of Nick Fury winked in and out. Many died on the spot. Nick Fury ripped himself from his surveillance station "Who the fuck gave that bullhead Evans's coordinates?!" Not waiting for an answer, he walked directly to his command center, punched in strings of codes while still keeping an eye on the single screen still alive.

On it, he could see a deadlock ensuing. Evans on the ground, protected by his bubbles. Thor standing directly above, forcing all the power at his disposal onto Mjolnir, trying to break the bubbles. He was gaining, because Nick could see cracks popping up on the shield bubbles.

"Captain America is moving in." A field agent reported in, reassuring.

Turned out he didn't need to, because the next thing to happen was James Evans pointing his frying-pan at Thor's face. The light ceased, and the thunders sputtered out, just before Thor himself hit the ground with a meaty thud. Just like that. Nick had stopped his furiously Fury-esque keyboard punching, his eyes peeled on the single screen alive. Evans pointed his pan. Thor went down. No shouts. No fanfare. No sparkly magical rainbows or ominous gust of wind. Pointed pan. Unconscious Asgardian meathead.

James Evans sat up on the screen in utter silence, in that room and in SHIELD mobile mission quarter. Pointed fan. Unconscious Asgardian. Like an extreme version of elementary calculus. One made-in-China frying pan equalled one unconscious Asgardian thunder god.

"Just what is going on with the Chinese R&D department?" One of his assistant whined. "I thought Americans were the best. We invented Robocop!" While another mumbled. "I give up. Even the Chinese cookwares know kung-fu..."

But Thor wasn't as out cold as Nick had thought. Before the eyes of more than one hundred SHIELD agents linked to the surveillance feed, the thunder god struggled. The muscles on his arms and backs spasmed, visible even through the armor. Something was holding him down on the floor. By Nick's guess, the very same force that had Natasha turned into a literal human doll.

"Are we recording this?" He shouted to the nearest assistant. Cerberus squad's signal had gone quiet for a whole minute. His guess was they'd been taken out the moment they fired their first and only volley.

"Sir, yes, sir."

"Stubborn kid..." James Evans clucked. He spoke quietly. He hadn't meant for the words to be heard. But his muttered words, amplified ten-folds through SHIELD surveillance bugs and sound filtering system, resonated through SHIELD com network like liquid ice. Those words chilled Nick to the core. "I really hate fighting children. Feels like bullying..." He stopped there, looked around the room. The walls were collapsing, as was the floor. A spiderweb of cracks appeared on concrete office floor, its center a violently twisting Thor. The frying pan twirled once, then a look passed Evans's face. He'd made his decision. He hang his pan on the side of his kiss-the-cook apron, walked around the struggling thundergod, stopped in front of Natasha Romanof. He picked her up, carried her bridal style, her head cradled in the crook of his right arm, then, with a wink at the last surveillance bug "See ya." he disappeared.

.

.

.

The last screen died, but not before it could show Nick Fury the last image of Thor breaking free now that Evans was gone.

"Did we get all that?" Said Nick, after a full minute standing stock still before the static-filled screen.

"Yessir!"

"Good, send it to the psy-op team. Tell them I expect quick results." He can predict some of those results already. Teleportation. He would need the range, if possible. A form of weaponizable paralyzing ability, not technical, not chemical, perhaps psionic, possibly only applicable in close-range. Rudimentary mind-reading? Because if James Evans had had a fully-optimized invasive telepathy, Nick wouldn't be standing here unharmed. This whole operation wouldn't be still be going on. He can't guess exactly how the anthropology professor knew SHIELD was coming for him. It could have been telepathy-based clairvoyance, but there were simply too many possibilities. He didn't want to be biased. He wanted as accurate an observation on James Evans's powers as possible. What the immortal alien had shown defied all known models of superpowers. Trying to classify them with what was familiar would be a dumb thing to do.

"Signal the cleaner team. Tell them to prepare for the media shitstorm to come, and clean this place up. It's a mess. We're going mobile." He issued the orders. "Following Evans."

The mission has been worse than he expected, courtesy of their lack of info on the target, but it wasn't yet unsalvageable, or his name wasn't Nick motherfucking Fury.

He opened the door of the mobile headquarter as agents sprinkled in all corners of Hewitt-Cooper street scrambled to mobilize. Captain America came in through the door. He was among the few Avengers member allowed on this mission. The others, Bruce Banner and Hawkeye, were compromised and therefore unfit for field op, one physically, one mentally.

"Where's Stark?"

"Flying above us. He'll follow."

"Did you get em all?" He asked Steve, referring to the directives he just belted out.

"Yes. How are we following him? We don't have any tracer on him. If we had any, they should be dead."

The good Captain was right. Evans's tech-negating power was as infuriating as it came, especially for an organization so reliant on their technological muscle as SHIELD. But that didn't mean they were completely powerless against him.

He motioned for Steve to come in, closed the door as the captain walked in. The inside of headquarter was buzzing like the inside of a broken bee nest. Outside, things started shifting. What appeared to be a non-descript but especially large food truck shed its dingy coat, sprouted legs, rocket launchers, and a complete aero-propulsion system. With a couple of rumbles, it took flight, rising up New York night skies.

"James Evans leaves unique footprints." Said Nick as they came to a holographic map of New York city. The city shone in countless dots of blue light. "This is New York. There's not a patch of land here not covered by something more technologically advanced than a single-frequency radio. Wherever he goes, he'll wipe out the digi-signal in the area... as he did with our com bugs. We simply follow them."

"What if he goes beyond the city border? Or even out of the country? What if he leaves and never comes back."

"He won't." Said Nick. Not a smidge of doubt in his voice. "This has happened to him before. FBI visited him. CIA and the Secret Service visited him. Possibly others did too. We have no records of those operations because he wiped them out. He wiped their minds and he wiped their databanks. There's no question about it. But he didn't wipe ours. He didn't get the chance to. Therefore, he will return... to finish the job... or else, we'll hunt him until either of us cease to exist. I reckon that'd be a drag for an immortal, having an armed force on his tails for an indefinite amount of time." And even in the event that Evans left and never came back... well, that would be a damn shame that they never got the chance to study his powers and their possible application, but considering the current power climate, a rogue Asgardian magician on the loose, he'd rather Evans leave and never come back, then deal with the potential catastrophe that was a mutual alliance between the two sorcerers. It was really a damn shame. He'd meant to have a peaceful introduction with the alien immortal. He'd sent only two agents as the face and voice of SHIELD. Two unarmed agents! But situation did not allow for finesse. They were all pushed into a 'with us, or against us' scenario. But Nick kept that to himself. Part of a the director of a militaristic espionage organization was to appear unmoved and absolutely confident.

As soon as Nick finished, a black dot appeared on the West side of New York.

"Sudden blackout in Queens, tracing." A tech specialist announced, rather unnecessarily.

"That's our man." Said Nick. "Transfer coordinates to all mobile agents... except Thor. I'm not having him bull-razing over the target. Draw a perimeter. Do not approach any further in until I say so."

"What's the plan? How do we deal with him? Brute force obviously isn't the answer... unless you're willing to use bigger guns on him." Steve paused here, his eyes wary. "In which case, I will protest. This is a populated city." Nick knew what he meant. Big guns. Those guns SHIELD had reverse-engineered from Asgardian tech. Each of them had the potential to be a mini nuke-launcher. Not pretty idea to entertain in a city of more than eight million people in it. Not that Nick didn't consider it. He did. It was his job... to consider things no other would, either out of a lack of courage... or an excess of morality.

"Have a little more faith in us, cap." He said, softly. "This is our people too. SHIELD's ultimate goal is peace and protection for all that live on Earth, not wanton destruction for want of greater power." But sometimes, for the greater good, acts of atrocity were necessary. Steve didn't need to think about that today though. "We'll change to plan B from here."

"Plan B?"

This time, Nick allowed a grin to bloom on his face. It was savagery rendered in the flesh. "The tranqs weren't for James Evans, Steve. The tranqs were for Natasha."

The grin stayed on his face for exactly twenty seconds, because on second number twenty-one. A booming sound ripped through the central comm grid that just went back online minutes ago.

"What was that?"

"Sir..." A field agent reported it. The man couldn't keep the panic off his voice. "It's Thor. He's gone. He's headed to the coordinates. The Immortal's coordinates."

Shit. Again? That was twice in under fifteen minutes. There was a leak. "Trace that..." He started, but was stopped as the cracks of static flooded his headset, then the voice of Tony Stark.

"On it way before ya, big guy. It's a peeping Tom program running in the background softwares. I traced it to a facility in German and a warehouse south of New York. I know this code, Nick." He said, leaks of anxiety in his voice. "I saw this when the Helicarrier was infiltrated. It's him, Nick...

…. it's Loki."

* * *

**End Chapter 5**

* * *

1/ More action than humor this chapter. But we'll have the humor back, sooner or later.

2/ Loki is name-dropped in this chapter. He'll have screen-time next chap, or I'm eating my typewriter.

3/ Sorry for any possible grammatical errors or typos. This is unbetaed and written by a non-native speaker. (I would really appreciate it if you take the time to point out the mistakes for me.)

4/ Sorry for the long wait time too. I got a promotion. I was a staff writer for an e-news publication four months ago. Now I'm their junior editor with my own team of staff writers. I also freelance write for an expat magazine (It's called Oi Vietnam, and the first issue is coming out in February). It's taken a helluva toll on my free time. All of my fanfic plans were pushed back. I've got somewhat of a better hang on my job now. Hopefully the updates will come out quicker. The next fics on my update list are (drums roll): Cognates of Heaven chapter 4 (the dark, gritty, and bloody love and political story of Elrond from Lord of the Rings and bloodmage Marian Hawke from Dragon Age 2. Crossover ahoy!) and Book Air chapter 5 (writer's block. Shit), then reroll to Mirror Mirror chapter 6 (titled "The Chase" in which Harry and Loki meet for the first time. Natasha is the other woman and more explosions ensue! Also, Thor is sent nyan-cat all over New York.)


	6. Chapter 6

_**Disclaimer:**_ The Avengers universe and all its characters belong to Marvel. Likewise with Harry Potter.

**Technical disclaimer**: I am not a physicist, nor a chemist, nor a citizen of New York City or even the United States of America, and definitely do not have intimate knowledge of US military. I am also not British (or even am a native speaker of the English language), so please don't look for British-esque in Harry's speech pattern. I am simply a writer who's playing around with ideas, plots, characters, and MacGuffins stuffs. So please, please, please don't try to bring a microscope to the the chemical, physiological, logistic, and militaristic details of this chapter (or whole story really), because it most definitely will fall apart under your scrutiny. I am simply trying to have fun writing and I hope you can have fun reading too.

Beta: Michelle T.

**Chapter 6:**** The Chase**

"The tranqs weren't for James Evans, Steve. The tranqs were for Natasha."

- Nick Fury, Mirror Mirror chapter 5 -

* * *

Natasha was on fire.

Almost literally. The fire started first from her lungs, where she inhaled the Benzodiazepine, then spreaded out through her musculatures and Thoracic veins, then down to her arteries. Then up to her brain, until she thought she saw blood in her eyes.

It lasted for, at most, two minutes. It felt like hours.

Her body tethered on the verge of unconsciousness. She did not let it take the plummet. Then the pain passed. And it was all Natasha could do to command her body to retain its rigid pose instead of lazing under the absence of the pain.

James Evans did not appear to notice, so preoccupied was he with whatever magic he was doing.

Good.

Benzodiazepine. A simple but potent chemical-based tranquilizer. It was the basis of many other far more complicated chemical tranquilizers. This was the one simple fact that dictated the physical conditioning protocols of all high-level, high-risk espionage SHIELD agents to always have a counter solution jacked up and ready in their bodies. Natasha's was in the right arm, under layers of skin and muscles, a small surgical silicate tube, feeding a sporadic stream of counteragents as needed into her system. On the exact second the Benzodiazepine entered through her nostrils and down her inhalation tube, her own chemical safeguards were on their way to counteract the effect.

The principle was simple. Chemical tranquilizers sedated by numbing and-or paralyzing the target's nervous system, as well as introducing a freezing effect on the musculature. The counteragents fixed this by administering a severe, physical shock into the paralyzed systems - one huge-ass injection of pain right to the back of her cranium where the brain made sense of sensation signals - literally shocking the system back to work, much like defibrillation for the heart.

When Nick ordered the Benzodiazepine shot, he had done this with the full knowledge of how the tranq needles would affect Natasha. The act was fully intentional.

And that was why, two minutes in after the tranq needles exploded, releasing the drug into gas form, Natasha was no longer petrified by whatever Evans did to her. They didn't know if Evans's petrifying ability worked on the same principle. Nick took a gamble. It paid off... for now.

So there she was, carried by SHIELD's current number one target as he hightailed out of the site, trying to keep her body limp and unresponsive as it was when it was still under Evans's spell.

There was a cracking sound, then the room along with one furious Asgardian thunder god disappeared, replaced by a New York skyline viewed from a dizzying height. All of a sudden, James Evans was standing on top of a helicopter signal pole. The electric light on the tip of the pole winked in and out.

Natasha's stomach bottomed out the exact second she realized the helicopter pole they were standing on was the pole on top the Empire States Building, and down below was a thousand and two hundred fifty foot fall to the ground. The effect was visceral and spontaneous. It took all she had to prevent her body from kicking out on instinct at the sudden and dizzying height. The wind whipped and roared around them at that height, concealing the minutes of her reflexive trembling.

Another crack, and suddenly Empire State Building view on New York skyline was replaced by the interior of a dark and slightly musty apartment. The quiet that followed the wind howls was unsettling in its abruptness.

Instantaneous teleportation. Natasha thought, trying to keep her mind busy and away from her body's trained reflex to move. So that was how he'd approached her so quickly and silently in that corporate building across from Hogwarts Museum.

Gently, James Evans laid her down on the soft surface of what must either be a bed or a very large recliner. She can smell the dust and dampness of disuse in the air. In the dark, he fumbled with something. There was a clicking sound. Then the room was flooded in light.

James Evans stood directly above her, one hand still on the dangling switch of the chandelier-themed electric light. He looked her in the eye. Natasha froze up, nervous that he was going to call her on her ruse.

Did he figure out she was no longer constrained by his paralysis spell? Could he? Was he waiting? Was he baiting her? Maybe. Maybe not. This was shadow play, subtle mind-and-daggers game between fellow espionage agents and wet-workers, of which Evans must have been one. Natasha might have lost to him earlier, but the game had not ended yet. After all, this was not the first time she partook the game tied up in ropes and apparently at the mercy of others.

Wait. She must wait, bide her time until opportunity presented itself.

This was the one chance she had, to lie in wait for the perfect moment when he had his attention elsewhere... and strike. A perfect blow that would take him out in one go, immortal or not. One chance. She had gone toe-to-toe with him earlier and it hadn't worked. A repeat would bring no different result.

Then the moment passed. Evans walked away from her and towards the locked windows. He opened them, one by one, and let the night wind come in. The breeze caressed her face, wet and smelling of an incoming rain.

"My apologies." He said as he clicked the shutter off on the last window. "I haven't used this place for the last... decade or so. It's gotten quite stuffy in here. Well, nothing a little bit of wind won't fix. I hope you don't mind."

Outside the windows was the view of a long identical-brick-houses neighborhood, ending with the neighborhood roundabout. Immediately and simply out of trained reflex, Natasha thought of possible escape plans.

"I own the whole block." Evans said with a snort, as if he could read Natasha's thoughts off her face. Well, there went her escape plan then. He probably had the whole placed rigged to the roofs. It was what Natasha would have done in his place, if she'd used this apartment as either a safe house or an impromptu prison in the past. Getting out of here without triggering whatever he had in store was about as nice as a cat-in-hell's chance.

Evans stood there for a moment, quiet, looking out the opened windows, thinking something through. Then he sucked in a long, loud breath, making the kind of breathy, wheezy sound that suggested he'd made a decision he wasn't entirely comfortable with. He turned to her, green eyes almost glowing in the warm electric chandelier light.

"I must apologize. I dislike doing this on principle. I wouldn't, if your... employer... weren't so competent." He paused here, smiling a quirky smile. "... or didn't have a hard-headed superpowered beefcake on their payroll. That as well."

Then the smile vanished. "But since they did, and I had to retreat before I even fully knew what was going on and why they... you... were there on my doorstep, with guns trained on my head, I don't have much of a choice any more."

There was a table by the window, and on that table was a vintage 1960 HMV gramophone box. Evans opened the box with one hand, while his other hand leafed through a stack of vinyl records. "I'm going to have to do something neither of us will enjoy." He said as he pulled one out, popped it on the turntable. Then he pulled the stylus arm down, and wheeled the crank. A second later, Michael Crawford's 'Put on your Sunday clothes' came blaring from the horn, crooning in 1960s trendy melody of a glamorous city and the wide open world of a young and virgin America. The entire time, he had his back facing her. It took all of Natasha's will to refrain from immediately bolting up from where she lay and promptly took advantage of this rare opportunity. But no! She went against him earlier with an M98 and a tungsten-carbide dagger and lost. This time, she had nothing on her but a clip of tranquilizer needles concealed in the inside of her suit. She didn't need superpowers to know how that fight would turn out. She needed something more. She needed...

… the perfect moment.

"I'm going to take a look into your mind." Evans said, matter-of-factly. He walked around her to the back. He pulled at something; whatever it was she was resting on turned out to be a recliner after all, because the back of it was raising up as Evans turned the wheel until she was no longer lying down but sitting up at a slanting hundred degree.

He sat down beside her on a stool, close, but not touching. "My kind call this Legilimency, the art of mental intrusion. I guess you'd call it telepathy. Semantics. I'm not really interested in those. But you know what _is_ interesting?"

He paused, as if he was waiting for her answer... or maybe for the question to sink in.

"It's the mind." Evans tapped his temple with a finger. "The non-magical ones." So he really was a magician. Natasha supposed she should get used to the 'adacadabra talk' now that there were two of them running around in New York. "My kind would say that non-magical folk had little in defense against a Legilimency intrusion. But I've seen differently. I've seen the contrast. On average, I would say the non-magical have far better organized minds. Your boss, the big, brooding Mr. Fury, is a fine example of it. Against someone like him, I would have preferred normal eye contact... and I would have come to him first, but... your gun was bigger, and your crosshair was on my head. So out of concern for my own safety, I had to come to you and not him."

Don't you dare tense up, Natasha told herself. Don't you dare get your ass busted here. This is not the time yet.

"I gleaned... some... from your own surveillance system. But a mind as tricky as his? And through your com system? It's a shame that after all those years of practice, I'm still not very good at it. If I had tried harder, I would have fried the man's mind. So I didn't, and here we are."

There was another pause, and the silence between them filled with the sounds of music. Then Evans leaned forward. "Relax." He said as he put a hand on her temple. His eyes were green and glowing up close.

Now? Is it now? Is it now? Natasha's mind shrieked, the lick of nervous tension straining against her professional coolness. One push of the button on the inside of her wrist and the tranq needle will be in her hand, ready for action. A chemical cocktail several times stronger than Benzodiazepine. James Evans had used his 'magic trick' to prevent the tranqs from getting to him earlier. That meant that he was affected by it. A tranquilizer needle can be a very potent weapon, but it must be used at exactly the right moment, not a second early, not a second late. There must be no margin for error... not against someone of James Evans's caliber.

"Focus on the music. It will hurt only a little. I have no doubt your mind is no less twisted and complex than your boss. Let's not make this difficult for the both of us." Natasha's fingers clenched tight. The tips of her fingers caressed the button on her wrist. "You won't remember any of this afterwards. It will all be just... a dream."

He was very close now. His face and green witch eyes blotted out everything. Their closeness gave the act undue intimacy.

Now. Now!

"Legilimen..."

The needle was in her hand. The muscles in her arm twisted, preparing to deliver. Then...

… the room itself shook with an echoing 'wuuuumph' sound, as if someone was beating a great bronze drum somewhere far away, and the sound was the ghost... no... the premonition of the thunders following it. Something shook. Shock waves in the air. The tranq needle noiselessly fell from her hand. Something in Natasha screamed out at the lost opportunity. The gramophone fell off the table. 'Put on your Sunday clothes' cut in the middle, thrashing in stilted notes of Sunday shine and Parasol and a world of smiles. The electric lights winked in and out.

Evans jerked up from his sitting position, eyes towards the opened windows, which were glowing a faint red. He said not a thing. No cliche', 'that's impossible'. The only thing he did was raise an eyebrow. A look passed through his face. Surprise. Annoyance.

He brought up his hand.

In the split second after, the windows exploded and in came the very familiar face of an Asgardian thunder god, flushed red with either fury or exertion.

"Eva..." Thor started, but that was as far as he got. He'd come in right in front of Evans's outstretched hand. The wizard simply snapped his fingers, and just like that, a bubble popped into being, swallowing and petrifying Thor up right on the spot.

"I'll admit that you get points for perseverance." Said James Evans, as if he was commenting on the weather and not on a raging superpowered thunder god. "But you aren't terribly smart, are you? Did you really think I'd be caught off guard a second time just like that?" That freakishly overpowered made-in-China frying pan was still jacked up on his belt, and with a flick and twist, it was out, swinging in the air. He reared back, like a baseball batter preparing for a hard pitch—"I have no doubt we will be seeing each other again, very soon... but for now... good night."—and swung. The butt of the frying pan collided with Thor's face with a resounding bang. From her spot, Natasha watched the thunder god's head oscillated comically. She almost expected to see little yellow birds chirping and flying in circles around his head. Then he fell with a meaty thud.

Evans turned to her, sheathing his frying pan. "Let's go." He said, picking her up again. "He won't be out for long. I have no doubt I have put little deterrence in his plan to chase me down... for whatever cause it is in that head of his. Ahh, young people..." And he was right. Over Evans's shoulders, Natasha saw Thor stirring on the ground.

Then a crack, and the interior of the apartment vanished before her eyes.

* * *

"He's gone!" Captain America announced from his position, standing in front of the tracker map they had reserved for James Evans alone. Nick Fury leaned over from his personal station. The good captain was right. The black dot had disappeared from the Queens neighborhood. The place where it used to be, a blue dot hovered.

"Thor..." Nick muttered, his irritation buckling under a veneer of calm and collected demeanor. It seemed SHIELD trackers on the thunder god himself were still in perfect working order. He switched channels on his headset. The moment the line cleared, he started. "Stark. How's progress with Loki?"

On the other side, he heard something like an 'aww shucks'. "Things are tough, big guy." Tony Stark's voice came through loud and clear. "Apparently, Loki's thralls know what they're doing. I can't boot his peeping programs off the mainframe as fast as they multiply themselves. They're going at it like cyber bunnies, and it's not even funny. It doesn't help that he already decimated SHIELD's cyber warfare suites the last time he visited us on the Helicarrier. I'm going to need an hour... at least..."

An hour? That would be... problematic.

Nick turned back to the tracker map. James Evans's black dot had reappeared in the Bronx, in a zone marked as industrial interest. Immediately Thor's blue dot started moving towards the black dot in what must be breakneck speed outside this room. In the blink of an eye, he'd already crossed the canal separating the two boroughs.

"Have you tried shutting down Thor's line?"

"Tried it. Three times." Nick could almost hear the wince in Stark's voice. The full-time billionaire part-time superhero provided no further explanation. Nick didn't need it. Of course. The com set SHIELD provided for Thor was custom-built and ready to take a beating, physically and digitally. Too bad Loki had found a way around it and commandeered the whole thing, no doubt issuing false orders to Thor using SHIELD's voice, and now he, Nick Motherfucking Fury, was left at the other end of the stick, trying to yank the whole thing back and beat the God of Mischief over the head with it.

On the tracker map, Thor's blue dot jumped Evans's black one. They tangled.

"Power's gone out in an entire block in the Eastern side of the Bronx. Readings are off the charts sir." His assistant announced, rather unnecessarily he might add. It wasn't like all Nick did was glower with his one eye and deliver hammy Quentin-Tarantino-esque lines.

He watched the electric and digital signature readings go on and off as the two dots tangoed some more before stopping abruptly the moment the black dot disappeared. It reappeared on the other side of town, some hundred miles away. Immediately, the blue dot gave chase. The cycle continued.

Teleportation. He thought, and made another mental note on his increasingly long list of James Evans's powers.

"What shall we do?" Asked Steve, turning fully to him.

Nick crossed his arms. "We wait." He said simply to the astonishment of his audience. He was never known as one to sit aside idly when there was action to be had. Absolutely unruffled by the stares he was getting, he tapped his headset.

"Stark, you there?"

"Uh... yeah! Yeah, I'm here." He can hear the surprise in Tony Stark's voice.

"You can stop butting head with Loki over my dataframe."

"Yeah, got i... what?"

"You heard me. Let Loki have free rein over Thor."

"Wait a minute, Nick." Steve Rogers jumped in. "Tony said he'd only need an hour. I'm sure we can..."

Ahh... count on Captain America to always be the good boy scout of the group. But that was what he liked about the old hero—his earnestness. Tony Stark, on the other hand, was as quiet as stone on his end of the line. For all the buffooneries he performed, Stark was sly as a fox. Even now, Nick had no doubt he was quickly figuring out the plan in his mind.

"Look at it." He said, stopping Steve in the middle, pointing a hand at the tracker map. On it, the black dot had teleported again, and the blue dot hot on its heels. "Notice anything?"

"Evans's not getting out of the city. He's been jumping like a bunny all over town. But he doesn't set a foot outside." Came the answer, predictably, from Stark over the com channel and into the headsets of everyone in the mobile quarter. From a small onsite camera, Stark had the same view of the tactical map as anyone in the room.

"That's right. You know what that means?" Without waiting for replies, he answered his own question. "That means Evans knows he's tailed. He knows we can track him." He watched realization dawned on many faces. "But he doesn't know how. If he did, he would have neutralized it then hightailed out of the city by now, and came back for us when we don't expect him."

Though Nick had no solid proof—seeing that their enquiry into Evans over the grid must have triggered off something for their initial field operation to be put to the axe so quickly—he had a hunch Evans wasn't entirely confident in his tech ability. His innate power was a direct counterforce of technology. Though there were definite variables based on the readings they were getting, that one fact they knew about him was bound to have put barriers to any attempt of Evans to educate and update himself on current tech. Following that line of thought, it would make sense that though he'd figured they had tailed him somehow, even through his traceless teleportation, but didn't actually know how exactly they were doing it.

And wouldn't that be a bind for an immortal with too many secrets to keep?

Nick put himself in Evans's shoes. He squinted his eyes, as though he couldn't see. Evans wore glasses, and those weren't for show. He slouched a bit, detaching himself from the ramrod military posture of Nick Fury. He was James P. Evans. He was an immortal with a lot of tricks up his sleeve, but he was also forced on the defensive. He could move around the place, but they could track him. He didn't know how far their tracker went, or how it even worked to begin with. He couldn't teleport to a safe house real far away to shake them. Chances were, he would shake them only as far as he could throw himself, buy himself some breathing room that would hurt in the long run, and that would only reveal another of his carefully prepared havens to whoever was on his tail. Safe houses? How many did he have? Many. He was an immortal. It didn't hurt to be prepared and he certainly had the time, resources, and motives for doing so. But many was still a number, and number ran out.

On the monitor screen, a squad team moved into the apartment building clocks he just vacated. They were in his room, touching his stuffs, finding clues and more clues of his powers. His gramophone and carbon records lay in pieces on the floor. He was annoyed. At his age, he sometimes became attached to the little things. But more than that, there was disquiet. This was the first time something like this happened. CIA and the Secret Services certainly did not have this kind of... brute superpowered personnel... to send after him. These people were... different... for a lack of better words. They were prepared, and they knew things about him that their predecessors didn't. Their measures showed.

No, he can't run away. He decided. If he did now, he would be forced to go on the run for a long, long time. Sure he could simply teleported himself away to a sufficient distance that would give him enough time, dig the girl's brain for information on her employer at his leisure, then struck back at them when he was prepared. But time for him would also mean time for them, and information he had on them could also mean ready traps for them to spring on him.

The risk was there. And the fact that they somehow could track him while others before them couldn't.

No. Best finish things now, before it could get even bigger, and messier. He would keep the safe houses as they were supposed to, as contingency plans, and only made use of them when he absolutely needed to. First, he needed to figure out how they were tracking and just how far their range went. Figure that out, and he would have a lot more room to move in.

"What are we waiting for?" Steve came in in the middle of his thinking.

For Loki's move. But he didn't say that out loud. Nick looked up, silent for a second, then he said to the attendants. "Turn on the cable." Diversion tactics. What were they waiting for? He didn't know. There was something missing in his read into James Evans's mind, if it could be read at all. The man was an alien, and an immortal, whom they had just discovered for a very short time. For all his efforts in simulating his possible thought patterns, his mind could be a complete mystery, as the man himself was. Nick might be a very good tactician, but they simply had too little time and preparation for someone like James Evans.

However, there was one thing Nick knew for sure. James Evans wasn't moving out of the city. Something was keeping him here.

The screen lit up up with reports from several channels. Scott Pelley of CBS Evening News came in with breaking news of a series of blackouts and electronic equipment failures all over the city, which then prompted speculation of cyber sabotage works. On another, Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News reported what seemed to be gas tank explosions in several locations in Queens, inciting panic and nine-one-one stampede. Other channels reiterated the same messages.

"That's not good." Stark commented.

"Send the signal." Nick said to the assistants. "We're taking over the local stations. Tell them to put a lid on it."

"The local stations... the senator..." The chief assistant started, plain nervousness all over his face.

"Won't like it, I know. I'll deal with the senator." Nick cut in. "What we don't need right now is the press in on this. Send the signal. And while you wait for their responses, hack their networks, put them off air, immediately."

The press wasn't the only one he had to worry about. National security, central intelligence, and the city police force, and more. They would all want their noses in on the matter. Within thirty minutes, James Evans had put down five percent of the city electricity grid, and Thor behind him hardly left buildings and city infrastructure in one piece. Their chase left a trail of carnage all over New York.

For now, SHIELD could put a screen on things and told the others to go mind their business. But Nick could see a politically painful tomorrow morning. This city, after all, had seen its share of terrorist scare, and since then, it hadn't had the confident swagger it once had.

There wasn't a lot Nick could do about that. There wasn't a lot he could do right now, in fact. The Minicarier was forced to a hover in central New York sky. It was meant for target chases, but this one particular target was one it couldn't chase after. SHIELD ground forces were similarly held immobile, seeing that there was no way for them to win a foot race against a teleporting literal wizard. It was a very frustrating place to be, unable to go after the target, unable to engage in direct actions.

"Big guy, your diversion is not going to work for long." Tony Stark in his ears, on a private line. The others one were still distracted by the blaring TV cast.

Oh, didn't he know it. He needed to do something, before things spiraled out of control. He knew without a doubt that on the other line, Loki must be thinking similar thoughts, only without the pressure of having to answer to others aside from himself. Eventually, Evans would wear Thor down. In return, Loki would do something, soon, that would change the game entirely. He would be looking to end this chase and nail James Evans to a spot before that point where Thor fell behind and turned into easy prey to Evans's mind trick. In turn, Nick too needed to have a response ready.

It was a three-party speed chest now.

"It is inevitable that they will meet." He repeated his statement from the debrief meeting earlier in the day. "Our goal is not to stop them. Our goal is to influence how they meet. James Evans is not the final target. The final target... is Loki."

Then it occurred to him as he stood hunched over the digi-map tracking James Evans's movements. There was a pattern to it. With a few clicks, he ordered the map to show all jumps the immortals had made. Little black circles started polka-dotting the map interface. A clear blank started showing. A particular zone Evans was avoiding.

The museum. Evans's museum, which he had owned for decades on paper, and probably far longer in real life. The very one SHIELD force had not been able to penetrate.

"Fury..." Stark, again. It figured this would occur to him at the same time it would to Nick. "You have to warn them."

He did. With a flip, he switched on his connection. "This is director Fury." He spoke into his mouth piece. "All SHIELD personnels en route to Hogwarts museum. I repeat, our target has changed to Hogwarts museum. Form a perimeter surrounding the museum. Do not approach without further instruction."

There was a move in military tactic, an ideal response to guerilla warfare, which was basically what James Evans was doing now: a strike to the heart. But it wouldn't fall to him to deliver that strike.

"You bastard..." Stark growled, a rare hint of real anger in his voice.

"If you go now, you might get there in time." He said to Stark over his headset. "I'm not the one who's going to do it, Stark. I don't know what exactly he will do." But he knew the gist of it.

"What's going on?" Steve Rogers cut in, a wary look on his face. He had learned to be extra cautious around the director SHIELD, out of the realization that Nick Fury's ideas of peacekeeping was radically different from his own.

Before Nick could answer him though, the chief assistant butted in.

"Sir, something's happened." The assistant said as a warning. "We just got a report inhouse. A reserved warhead in Fort Drum military has been compromised. The coordinate is set to Hewitt-Cooper street, James Evans's museum."

In layman's terms, Loki just launched a rocket at James Evans's museum. It took a second for the statement to sink in, his other assistants because they were simply unprepared for such an event, Captain America because he hadn't yet fully adapted to the speech of the twenty-first century.

_Ah, there we go_. Nick thought to himself amidst the surprise and repressed panic going on around him. So that was Loki's move. A heavy hand, but he supposed the God of Mischief wanted to make a statement for James Evans's attention, or simply took this as a chance to troll them all.

"Think you can outfly a rocket, Stark?" He said over the headset, then to his gaping assistants. "Our plan does not change. Set coordinate for Hogwarts museum."

* * *

Many miles away, a certain wizard jerked to a stop on top of an old brick-work apartment building, looked up at the dark skies where something was streaking through in bright orange gold light.

"That..." For the first time ever, Natasha heard the note of true and utter shock in James Evans's voice, like a breath cut in half, the sign of something deeply disturbed.

What? What happened? In her mind, she could only think of two possible culprits, SHIELD... or Loki. She sincerely hoped it was the former. She was already in a very thorny situation, trapped with an opponent she couldn't outmatch unless the right opportunity come by while her clock ticked away to inevitable discovery. She didn't need another wizard on her plate.

James Evans couldn't stop long, because the next thing she knew, Thor was right behind them, zipping through the air and howling James Evans's name. The man... god... thing... didn't know the meaning of fatigue, not even after more than thirty jumps around the city.

But something was different this time, Evans stood still, not running away, his eyes up to the skies where the light streak was growing brighter and brighter by the second, until even Natasha, at her awkward angle, started to get some idea as to what it could be... but that...

Her thought stopped there. Thor slammed into them like a bull from behind, shoving both her and Evans off the ledge of the building, his hands grappling the wizard in a bid to stop further attempts to teleport away. They free-fell from six hundred feet up, tangling and twisting in the air. Evans's body went lax right around Natasha, moving in the same deadly, sinewy grace that had beaten her in their hand-to-hand faceoff earlier. He maneuvered his hand right in front of Thor's face. The next word to escape his mouth was a growl, a spit, suddenly full to boiling with a rage completely out of place for Evans's till-now cool and collected demeanor.

"Crucio."

Something moved in the word, in the syllables, like a spider that reached out from the heart of its web and struck. It sounded ugly, poisonous, like a bile rising up from the back of his throat. The sound of it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up straight.

Evans's hand in front of Thor's face glowed red. There was a another 'wummpph', right before Thor pulled away, screaming in shock and pain. The sound of it...

Natasha had never thought Thor could ever sound like that.

But they were still falling, and the vertigo was getting to her. Evans wasn't teleporting away. He let himself fall, pulling her with him. The hand holding her to him shook. She felt the the dampness of sweat coming through her catsuit. His wet, heavy pants blotted out the wind howl of their fall, as if Evans too couldn't believe what he just did.

At the last possible moment, he teleported away.

They reappeared on another rooftop, and as soon as the ground stopped shaking and wavering, the hands let go. She fell to the ground, sprawling. The landscape rolled in her vision, familiar under the yellow glow of streetlights.

Hewitt-Cooper street. They were on the rooftop of the Museum of Exotic Arts and Hogwarts Archive.

From the corner of her eyes, she watched Evans walked to the center of the roof. He made a complicated gesture. Immediately, something glowing appeared on the cement ground. It looked like a glyph, or a rune of some kind, if Natasha was into that type of fantasy stuff, which she wasn't, mind. But that wasn't the end of it. Evans followed up with a series of hooks and twists with his fingers and palms, looking to Natasha's eyes like he was delivering some particularly creative expletives in sign language. The whole rooftop lit up with strange symbols that wouldn't look out of place in a video game. A circle, glowing a pale blue, drew itself around them.

It was then that the light streak they had seen earlier came into view. Natasha's breath caught in her throat. It was true. Somebody had launched a rocket at them.

Who?

SHIELD? She knew they were ruthless in the pursuit of their cause, but she couldn't find it in herself to believe that the organization she had pretty much swore her life to would do something as reckless as launching a rocket at downtown Manhattan. Then who else?

Loki. It could only be him.

She glanced left. Evans was still busy 'swearing' with his fingers and his mouth at the cement ground. She chanced it, moving a finger upward, curling into the inside of her palm, reaching her wrist where a row of discrete buttons lay embedded in the cloth. She fumbled, read them by touch, found the one she wanted, pressed.

The back-up communication chip behind her right earlobe sprung to life. She knew she was lucky. It was a known fact that all electronic gadgets were in danger of Evans's tech-negating ability. However, it seemed the more high-tech, tiny-sized devices needed a much larger burst of power to go kapoof, as was shown in the last thirty minutes. The fact that the chip was offline the whole time and bordered on biotech itself probably also played a part.

Immediately, chatters came streaming into her ears. The sounds were distorted, clear proof that even it didn't escape unscathed from Evans's anti-tech magic. She had tapped onto the mainframe of their communication system and what she was hearing was the sound of SHIELD ground force congregating in a hundred feet diameter of the museum building, but nothing on the approaching warhead. It wasn't SHIELD then.

She released a breath she didn't know she was holding. In the black skies above, the rocket approached. Natasha's heart hammered. Everything in her that started from the day the child Natasha began her assassin career screamed for her to move, to stand up and run, to survive, but there was something holding it back. Her professional assassin and espionage agent training.

It was not yet time. It told her. Evans wasn't running.

So she lay there and watched the burning dot in the skies grow bigger and bigger, until she can see the bony white aircraft aluminum casing that housed the explosive. She counted down, pacing along the beats of her heart.

Three

Her ear-chip blew out. Blood dribbled down the side of her head. Evans was still 'swearing'.

Two

She can feel the heat, but the silence was worse. The silence made everything clearer. Was this it? Was this how it was going to end?

One

She can see the warhead very clearly now, and it was close. She kept her eyes open. She wanted to see it coming.

A great sound pressed down on her eardrums, so large it felt as though her head was going to burst. But it wasn't the scream of warhead detonation. Bright light filled her eyes until it hurt to keep them open. She didn't let herself look away.

She can see the warhead, a mere twenty or so feet above them, trapped in a sheer gold bubble, glowing, burning. It imploded, detonating from within. Flames danced within the bubble, and though she could feel her tongue go dry in her mouth and her hair singeing, none of that flame was getting out. Only the sound of air itself burning—like a hungry beast denied its meal, it raged.

In the light, Evans was standing with both his hands up, fingers spread, looking as if he was physically holding the explosion in. That might really be the case, because she can see his hands shaking, his skin glistening with sweat.

It went on for maybe five minutes until the bubble swallowed the flames whole. It felt like a century. When the light died away and skies went dark again, Evans collapsed on his knees.

Natasha curled her hand. A tranquilize needle fell snugly into her palm.

It was time. Here was her chance.

But someone else cut her to the chase.

"Fascinating." The voice froze her, liquid ice, shockingly painful after the heat of the implosion. From the corner of her eyes, she saw him.

Loki, standing in front of the opened door leading down the museum top floor, smiling in childlike curiosity.

* * *

**End Chapter 5**

* * *

1. Uh... this chapter didn't end up even remotely similar to how I thought it would be, all in the name of carrying the underlying logical structure of how SHIELD and Loki managed to corner Harry. So no, I didn't send him flying across the city. It's just an off-screen chase. Also, it was supposed to come out four days ago, but then Tet happened and Dragon Age Origins happened... so... I was distracted.

2. Kevin Choi. yes, Kevin Choi, you, who just graduated from UC Davis and who told me he would like to become a professor of political science. The same guy who goes about advertising his 'shortness' and how 'superior' it is all over the internet (and never actually clarifying whether you were talking about your height or your length *trollface*). I know you are here. You can't help yourself. I want you to know that this story, Mirror Mirror, began because of you. There, I just proved that I so can write humorous stories too (though this chapter is not funny at all, more serious. Well, we are entering a serious business kinda part of the story so any intended humor ill-inserted here would be awkward at the least).

3. Initially there was going to be no on-screen Loki in this chapter yet. The chapter turned out longer than I thought it would be, and I made it a rule to choppity-chop at around 5000, so that the update schedule of other fics (Tis Femina of Naruto fandom, Book Air of Legend of Korra fandom, and Cognates of Heavens of Dragon Age / Lord of the Rings fandom) won't be affected. So at 5000 mark I was about to take up my chopping knife and leave Harry and Loki's first meeting to chapter 6. Then I remembered I promised to eat my typewriter if there was going to be no Loki screentime in this chapter, and since I didn't have a good-enough sauce to go with my vintage Underwood beauty, I decided to be a good author and turned in another two hours so that Loki and Harry can finally meet.

4. This part is written on the behalf of Rosetta at Home. It has nothing to do with my stories or my writings or even myself. It is simply a plea for anyone who's willing to pay a little attention to the welfare of the community, a little cyber volunteer work, if you will (So you don't have to read it if you're not interested. But please, it only takes five minutes, and I'm pretty sure you've already spent hours reading what I write so what's five more minutes?).

Donate your computer processing power to Rosetta at Home!

Rosetta at Home: is a distributed computing project to solve the mystery of how the human protein strings fold, and from there discover the key to curing all diseases, including AIDS, cancer, flu, autoimmune disorders.

In layman's terms, no supercomputer is up to the task of calculating all the possible ways a human protein strings can fold into itself (like the ways a shoestring dropping into a carton box would look like, the possibilities are endless), so this project has to be done communally by a large group of computers. Rosetta at Home is a software that only works when your computer is idle or is using a very small percentage of the processing power (e.g. when you go to class and forget to turn down your laptop, when you fall asleep while writing your midterm essays, while you are reading the news from your office computer, etc...) to compute protein folding and find the 'golden folds'.

This project has gone on for some years now, organized by Baker Laboratory of the University of Washington. I got into it when a friend introduced it to me partly because I felt this was a very small thing I could do (I figure if my laptop can run Mass Effect 3 on high quality then Rosetta should be no big deal) that would help a lot of people, and partly because someone dear to me was hanging on to her life. My little sister who has a severe case of Lupus, an autoimmune disorder. I've been crunching the program for some months now and though I didn't let myself hope that I would see the day when my sister benefits from the fruits of Rosetta, only that perhaps other people later on could benefit from it (Fyi, one out of ten Americans run the risk of having lupus).

But it actually happened. A few days ago, the team started on the designing process of proteins that are meant as cures for a number of diseases, autoimmune disorders among them.

So there, that's the reason as to why I'm writing this to you now. If you have a loved one afflicted with diseases with no cure, if you yourself are afflicted, if you have seen other afflicted people and are touched, donate your computer processing power to Rosetta.

They don't ask you to do anything great. They don't ask you for your time. They don't ask you for your money. They simply ask for the time that you would have thrown away anyway on your computer. That's all. It is a very simple act that would save a lot of people.

The program is small, with no bugs nor trojans, no advertising, no phishing, no unwanted proposition for sibling programs, no credit card number required, no hidden deal. The only problem I've ever had with it is that sometimes it becomes a little overzealous and cause my laptop to slow down. A bit of tweaking around, limiting the amount of CPU usage it can access should solve this problem.

Currently, there are around 350,000 computers with Rosetta installed. Honestly speaking, I've seen indie shops with more followers on facebook and twitter than that (fyi, there are more people reading my writings than that too). The reason for its unpopularity is that the people who run Rosetta...

…. are complete dumbasses when it comes to PR. (If you are a member of the Rosetta team reading this, I mean it, guys!)

They may be brilliants doctors and scientists whose IQ probably doubles mine, but when it came to putting together an explanation or a presentation for their brain baby, they …

…. epic failed...

Yes, they are your typical socially hopeless people of science. Reading their explanations about the project is like reading a legal treaty written in Sur'keshian (if you don't know what Sur'keshian is, it's the language of the planet Sur'kesh, Pranas System, Annos Basin, Milky way, home to the Salarians, a species of amphibian aliens who are too smart for their own good but unfortunately only lives up to 40 years).

Their latest presentation clip is even worse. I think I fell asleep in the first minute. I'm not sure. My brain was a bit hazy at the time.

Anyway, my point is: please go check them out, and give them a chance. I'm throwing them some free PR, and they sure can use it.

And if you, the one reading this, are a member of the Rosetta team, tell your fellow Salarians disguised as humans to hire a human PR major to help out, maybe even hoodwink them into working for you for free. I'm sure your colossus IQ point can think of something. But get professional help...

…. seriously!


End file.
